“He was passed over for the post of chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, but Christian Thielemann was given another important post in the German music world on Monday: music director of the Bayreuth Festival, the temple to the music of Richard Wagner,” reports Michael Cooper in Monday’s (6/29) New York Times. “The title of music director is essentially a new one at Bayreuth—officials there said it was given briefly in 1931 to Wilhelm Furtwängler—and the decision to bestow it upon Mr. Thielemann showed his growing influence at the festival. Mr. Thielemann, the principal conductor of the Dresden Staatskapelle, made his debut at Bayreuth in 2000 conducting Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and was given the title of musical adviser there in 2010. In recent months the German news media has been full of reports of squabbling between the heirs of Wagner who run the festival, which has become its own sort of Bayreuth tradition…. Thielemann is to conduct a new production of Tristan und Isolde at this summer’s festival.”
Posted June 30, 2015
