The Bayreuth Festival dropped four productions from its 150th anniversary season in 2026 because of budget cuts, the festival said Thursday.
The German festival devoted to composer Richard Wagner attributed the decision to its employees' public-service sector labor contracts and an inability to increase revenue. The festival said it is 55% self-financed.
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Bayreuth, built to the composer's specifications and run by his great-granddaughter Katharina Wagner, had planned to present all 10 of his mature works plus the festival debut of “Rienzi,” Wagner's rarely performed third opera.
Citing labor costs, the festival said it will limit its 2026 schedule to “Rienzi” along with the four-opera “Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung),” which inaugurated the festival in 1876; Wagner's final opera, “Parsifal,” which premiered at the house in 1882; and “Der Fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman),” Wagner's fourth opera and what is considered the first of his mature works.
Bayreuth dropped planned 2026 revivals of “Tannhäuser,” “Lohengrin,” “Tristan und Isolde” and “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.”
The 2026 Ring Cycle will be a special production and not the Valentin Schwarz staging that debuted in 2022 and is to be staged for the final time in 2025. Bayreuth said it will announce the “Rienzi” director next summer and that 2026 will be the only time it presents “Rienzi.”
The 2026 season will open as planned with Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, which was conducted by Wagner following the foundation stone ceremony in 1872 and was later played at the 1951 postwar reopening of Bayreuth.