Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Bayreuther Festspiele | English

Despite many perceptive details, Bayreuth's new Ring culminates in a rather damp squib of an ending.

Will Siegfried get his girl? Will she turn out to be his sister? And has the ultimate prize already got into the wrong hands? More posers from Bayreuth's intriguing new Ring.

The plot thickens as "episode two" of Bayreuth's new Ring muddies the waters of Siegfried’s paternity and Wotan comes to regret his actions.

The Bayreuth Festival's new Ring gets off to a promising start with a tautly directed Rheingold, but will we find out what it all means?

Despite its enigmatic details, Bayreuth's Parsifal reaches a cathartic climax. 

Yuval Sharon's production returns to Bayreuth in a musically compelling performance. 

Kosky’s production manages to maintain all hallmarks of a 16th-century fairy tale, while juxtaposing them with questions of deep human, political and artistic problems. Regietheater at its best.

Yesterday, the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, where devotees of Richard Wagner converge annually from all over the world, opened its doors again for this year’s festival. Traditionally presented on the first evening, the new production for this season was Tannhäuser und der Sängerkrieg auf Wartburg (to use the opera’s full name), presented to a capacity audience.

The label “most opera directors” does *not* apply to Barrie Kosky, who makes his Bayreuth debut with a Meistersinger that pulls no punches.

Uwe Eric Laufenberg sets his new staging of Wagner's final opera among the persecuted Christians of the contemporary Middle East – but avoids preaching.

Despite a miscast Isolde, Wagner's operatic monument to love makes its mark in the production by the composer's great-grandaughter.

Frank Castorf's controversial but supremely well-cast Ring cycle is provocative to the last.

Visual references both incongruous and perceptive abound in the third instalment of Bayreuth's musically triumphant Ring cycle.

Singing, orchestral playing and scenic portrayal all combine to make a highly memorable second instalment of Wagner's Ring.

Bayreuth's controversial Ring returns with a new conductor and a refreshed cast.

When audiences first heard Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, they were stunned by the sustained, passionate eroticism of the score, with the musicians amongst them amazed by the variety of novel compositional devices.

For any opera lover, a first visit to Bayreuth is something of a pilgrimage to the holy land. Musically, I wasn’t disappointed, as the Dutchman’s leitmotif rose softly from the invisible orchestra, soon to be enveloped by the swirling storm brewed up by Wagner and conductor Christian Thielemann.