(© Enrico Nawrath)

First seen on the Green Hill in 2023, the director of “Parsifal,” 55-year-old Jay Scheib, professor of music and theatre arts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an American of international standing in the hi-tech world, is a technological wizard like no other! A couple of his credits include Thomas Adès’ “Powder Her Face” (New York City Opera) and the Jim Steinman/Meat Loaf musical, “Bat Out of Hell” (Capitol Theatre, Düsseldorf).  

Well known for his genre-defying works of daring physicality and the integration of new (and used) technologies in live performance, Scheib’s realization of “Parsifal” has thrust the Bayreuth Festival into the digital age by engaging in Augmented Reality (AR).   

Annoyingly, though, those members of the Society of Friends of Bayreuth, headed by Georg von Waldenfels, are light years away from Scheib’s thinking and, indeed, from Katharina Wagner’s thinking and vision, too. They harbour strong ideas of how Wagner’s operas should be presented and, therefore, with Scheib’s take on “Parsifal” it floundered a bit as far as they were concerned. But audience members I’ve spoken to at this year’s festival have greatly favoured Scheib’s concept in general. 

But such technology as augmented reality (AR), an interactive experience that enhances the real world with computer-generated perceptual information, is a thought-provoking and bold move to engage in. Hopefully, such ideas as the likes that Scheib harbours will appeal and attract newcomers and, above all, younger audiences to walk the Green Hill in anticipation of productions more in keeping with their viewpoint and lifestyle and in keeping, too, with modern-day theatrical presentation and needs. 

In essence, AR enables audiences to immerse themselves into a virtual three-dimensional world and, therefore, by using software, apps, hardware and the like, while employing the use of 3D glasses, technology overlays digital content on to real-life environments and objects in which the physically existing world is expanded by virtual content.   

Turning the clock back, though, I well remember those crudely cardboard-made red-and-green 3D glasses that came into being in the pioneering years of three-dimensional viewing in the late 1950s. Come the 1970s and you’ll find Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey had a go reviving the format in their movie, “Flesh for Frankenstein.” Now Bayreuth finds itself centre stage immersed in a simulated three-dimensional environment in what is one of the most ambitious attempts to incorporate AR into opera performance.  

A complicated process, the technology of AR can only be viewed through headsets which are linked to small boxes under one’s seat not too dissimilar to smartphones without, of course, screens. Each box has an app containing the AR content directly linked to the glasses. A technical stage manager is on hand following the piano score thereby communicating as to when the content should appear.  

In so many ways Scheib’s “Parsifal” is a memorable production and memorable, too, for the Spanish conductor, Pablo Heras-Casado, who made his Bayreuth début with it in 2023, returning to the Green Hill once again to work his magic in the pit. Under his direction he keeps the right balance between pit and the stage with the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra under his command excelling in the playing of the Prelude – a slow, religious tone poem based on the motives of the Love Feast, the Spear and the Grail – which wraps up and sets the scene for the entire opera which, of course, was specifically written for Bayreuth’s Festspielhaus and completed in January 1882. It was first seen in the same year. The opera became Wagner’s final and farewell work to the world. What a legacy! 

Therefore, if you were geared up with 3D glasses you would have been totally wrapped up and entwined in an abundance of nature in Act one ranging from forest scenes galore to a wide canvas of floral patterns all floating heavenly round Bayreuth’s vast auditorium. In essence, I was transported to another world, a fantasy world, really, one of make-believe, where wonder, amazement and surprise keeps good company with the opera’s main themes.   

Thoughts flashed through my mind how different my last 3D experience was in the Fifties. It’s beyond comparison compared to the interactive experience this time round. For instance, in the telling scene in which the innocent youth Parsifal arrives at the Hall of the Holy Grail, the AR element was second to none featuring oversized images of an entire flock of flying swans entering your visionary space and floating round the Festspielhaus to mesmerising effect.  

And if AR wasn’t enough, a video technician permanently on stage transmitted his images directly to various screens darted around the stage so, overall, there was a lot of visual activity to take in. Intermittingly, I took my 3D glasses off just to concentrate on the stage aspect of the production until curiosity got the better of me. I felt I was missing out in the world of augmented reality.  

Another good example of the AR content is amplified in the pivotal moment when Klingsor hurls the Holy Spear at Parsifal who miraculously catches it in midair thus causing his realm to collapse. Immediately, this scene was transported to the AR world by an extremely large floating image of the spear heading straight towards me. It came so close. I felt I could touch it! After lingering awhile, it simply vanished into thin air. Unbelievably, individual images such as objects like this can be directed straight to one’s seat by the technical stage manager. 

However, a strong and formidable team of seasoned Wagnerians were holding court in a production that’ll long be remembered for its originality in encompassing new technology, yet another forward-thinking idea conjured up by Katharina Wagner while another big technological leap is in store for next year’s festival. 

Cast Highlights

A Green Hill favourite, Andreas Schager, who first appeared at Bayreuth in 2016 as Erik in “Der fliegende Holländer,” made his Bayreuth début in the title-role of “Parsifal” in Uwe Eric Laufenberg’s magnificent staging of 2016. Therefore, it’s refreshing to see him back especially in Jay Scheib’s ground-breaking realization of such an important work in the Wagner canon. He fits the part so well while Moscow-born, mezzo-soprano, Ekaterina Gubanova, fits the part so well of Kundry. How well this deuce worked together.   

The cast was further enriched and strengthened by another Bayreuth favourite, Georg Zeppenfeld, as the veteran knight of the Holy Grail, Gurnemanz, while Michael Volle brought so much drama and authority to the role of Amfortas, king of the Grail, with Tobias Kehrer stoic as Titurel.   

And the character we all love to hate, the baddie of the pack, Klingsor, was played by Hawaiian-born baritone, Jordan Shanahan, who also made his Bayreuth début in the role in 2023. In a Svengalian, manipulative and cunning sort of way he delivers a magical performance that more than highlights his acting abilities which a packed house soaked up!  

More Production Details

The trio of creatives – Mimi Lien’s sets, Meentje Nielsen’s costumes and Rainer Casper’s lighting – fit so well the production overall while the colourful (over-the-top) stage picture of The Flower Maidens’ scene looked like a clip from the Barbie movie. 

The setting for the last scene, in stark contrast to the nature-loving opening scene, was a rather drab-looking affair punctuated by a long-abandoned industrial caterpillar-track vehicle dumped beside a dirty pond in a rubbishy down-trodden area with the AR content amass with a load of floating plastic bags and containers of all descriptions as well as industrial waste such as solid-state batteries and the like, highlighting the wastefulness and the deterioration of society in general – the suffering and deterioration brought upon the knights of the Grail through Parsifal’s foolish ways.  

But Parsifal redeems himself and the Brotherhood is miraculously saved. Abruptly, though, the ending came with Parsifal smashing the Holy Grail, seen as a piece of blue cobalt rock, to pieces. Once again, in the context of the production’s AR content, the overall stage effect of this ‘odd’ happening focuses mainly on an abundance of large chunks of rock floating aimlessly round the auditorium as if in outer space but they were floating, like all the other AR matter, before your very eyes.   

Change comes slowly in many respects in life especially at Bayreuth and I think it’s fair to say that Katharina Wagner and Jay Scheib’s gamble, if that’s the right word to use, paid off. But the cost of installing AR in the Bayreuth Festspielhaus is costly just for a handful of performances. That’ll most probably change over time. For instance, back track on early mobile phones! Strange as it may seem, those seeing the show free of AR technology didn’t seem to mind and those members of the audience absorbed with the new technology took it all in their stride. C’est la vie! 

However, gazing into my crystal-ball, I should dearly like to see a commissioned opera or, indeed, a musical, created especially with AR technology in mind staged, say, in a new purpose-built theatre designed in a similar vein to the ABBA Arena at London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford East which is elevating the ABBA Voyage show to a different (and higher) level of entertainment never seen before.   

What happens next at Bayreuth, I wonder? However, over the past few years one cannot deny that Katharina Wagner has attracted a host of enterprising and gifted directors to the Grüner Hügel who have conceived and delivered a string of stunning productions such as Barrie Kosky’s “Meistersinger,” Tobias Kratzer’s “Tannhäuser” and Yuval Sharon’s “Lohengrin” – the latter still in the repertoire. 

From my standpoint, Frank Castorf’s bicentennial Ring hit the mark but overall got the thumbs down. Extraordinarily, it’s now being hailed as a worthy and progressive production by many Wagnerites I meet on my travels. Then there’s Patrice Chéreau’s politically motivated centenary Ring in 1976 – it received the same kind of reception. Surprisingly, today, it’s now being hailed as a masterpiece. 

Interestingly, the Bayreuth Festival has been led by a member of the Wagner family since the death of Richard Wagner in 1883. His great-granddaughter, Katharina Wagner, took over the joint artistic directorship of the festival with her half-sister, Eva Wagner-Pasquier, from their father, Wolfgang, in 2008, while becoming sole artistic director in 2015. She emphatically said, “If Bayreuth just continues to mount traditional-style productions audiences might as well sit at home and watch Wagner on DVD.” She’s absolutely right.

Thankfully, Katharina Wagner’s still firmly at the helm steering the Bayreuth Festival on an ambitions journey not least by next year’s festival where technology once again takes command of the Green Hill like never before. Therefore, marking the 150th anniversary of the Bayreuth Festival, audiences can expect an experiment of visionary force in a brand-new production of “Der Ring des Nibelungen” that not only stages Wagner’s great musical drama but places its history of reception at the centre of thought through a visual layer that constantly shifts, expands, reassembles and contradicts itself. For the first time in the history of Bayreuth, Artificial Intelligence (AI) will play ‘live’ on stage not as a character but as a creative visual force. 

As usual, members of the cast remain at the hub of the performance but with a calm almost sculptural presence while their bodies become fixed points in a visually pulsating cosmos of light, texture, history and association amidst projections that break apart, constantly shift and merge with one another. What’s ‘real?’ What’s ‘illusion?’ Where does ‘memory’ begin? Where does ‘interpretation’ end? 

These projections are more than a stage set – they are a reflective surface of 150 years of discourse. The AI that generates them has learned from countless images, voices, documents and productions. It does not show one “Ring” but many: the national myth, the sociopolitical upheaval, the explosive artistic force, the romantic utopia, the deconstructed shadow. Each performance will be unique because the images and associations are never static. 

This project understands the “Ring” as an open space of resonance demanding that the work needs to be retold again and again not in spite of its history but because of it. Therefore, AI becomes a mirror of collective memory but also a projection surface for the questions of our time: Who tells history? Who creates images? Who owns them? In this way, the timelessness of Wagner intertwines with the ephemerality of digital transformation. Sound meets code, myth meets machine, the festival meets the future. 

The stage becomes a laboratory of perception, a place where music theatre is not only performed but explored. This “Ring” will challenge and invite contemplation provoking a sense of overwhelming and intense proportions hopefully sparking interest, curiosity and exploration. It is a “Ring” of questions – not of answers. It is a “Ring,” too, that aims to cast Bayreuth (a place of history, projection and forward thinking) in a fabulous brand-new light creating music theatre that is both past, present and future. It promises a “Ring” that will interrogate itself – and, perhaps, audience members, too!