Music by Richard Wagner

Bayreuther Festspiele
Bayreuth, Germany
Premiere July 25, 2018

Director: Yuval Sharon
Conductor: Christian Thielemann
Choral Conductor: Eberhard Friedrich

In 2018, Yuval Sharon made history when he became the first American director to mount a production at the Bayreuth Festival: Wagner’s Lohengrin. This collaborative production saw Sharon join with artists Neo Rauch and Rosa Loy, whose stage and costume design washed the stage and cast in a fantastic, frosted blue into which the title character’s presence imbues a supernaturally bright electric spark. 

In Sharon’s Lohengrin, Elsa is the troubled protagonist whose imprisonment does not end with Lohengrin’s arrival but is rather replaced with forced marriage to a controlling stranger. Likewise, Ortrud is not the face of a secret pagan threat scheming to undermine Christendom, but rather an oppressed freethinker imploring Elsa to exercise what remains of her free will. And Lohengrin, far from the traditional holy warrior fighting selflessly on behalf of an unjustly accused woman, is a master manipulator whose charisma nearly brings him to the seat of power.

Sharon establishes this dynamic through a series of subtle dramatic cues, culminating in a climactic scene in which Elsa, rather than falling dead after compromising her faith, walks off into an unknown future.

Photography provided courtesy of Bayreuther Festspiele.