Postcards from Germany: Opera for All
By Ashley Moore
For Guymon Daily Herald
August 2-3, 2008
Film buffs who are also fans of controversial German composer Richard Wagner will remember the dramatic use of his music in the infamous battle-come-surfing scene in 1979's Apocalypse Now. It seems that director Francis Ford Coppola wasn't the only one who considered Wagner's music to be inspiring for military scenes; Nazi troops have been reported as listening to it before going out into battle. Wagner's music is even largely banned in Israel thanks to its use in Nazi propaganda and Hitler's love of all things Wagner, including the composer's rather public anti-Semitism.
Despite the controversy surrounding Wagner, however, many opera enthusiasts separate the composer's personal views from their appreciation for his music. Wagner put the city where I live – Bayreuth – on the map. This is where he spent the last part of his life and built his famous opera house, which is the first with a sunken orchestra pit. This is also where the internationally known Wagner Festival is held every year. The festival is wildly popular – the average waiting time for tickets is seven years.
With demand so high, regular Bayreuthers haven't been able to experience the festival for themselves until this year when Siemens brought in a big screen and 2000 seats to simultaneously broadcast the seven-hour production of "The Master Singers of Nuremburg" for everyone to see.
This wasn't your regular opera crowd: shirtless men on benches drinking beer, dreadlocked college students sitting on blankets, punks and middle-aged women in dresses all made up the crowd. It looked more like an outdoor rock concert than an opera event. The performance of the opera itself was also atypical. In an attempt to modernize a piece set in the 1600's, such bizarre elements as giant Campbell's soup cans, white sneakers that fell from the ceiling and an artist who painted everything he saw – including his love interest – white were included. It was about the time that the soup cans appeared that my friends and I decided it was time to go. Great compositions or not, we weren't going to be able to take three more hours of it!
Pictures: The crowd, fending off the sun's heat with umbrellas, is notified by an octet that the opera will begin shortly.
A motley crew watches the big screen during Bayreuth's 2008 live broadcast of the "The Master Singers of Nuremberg".
