The Bayreuth Festival

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On Thursday, my mum, my aunt Lore, and I left for Bayreuth, which is about 300 km from here, to attend the Bayreuth Festival. It is a very famous festival, where operas by the German composer Richard Wagner are played.

We spent the night in a very nice hotel, and the next day, we were picked up at the hotel by a shuttle bus at three p.m. Wagner's operas are very long, that's why they usually start in the afternoon. We were to watch "Tristan und Isolde", which would take around four and a half hours. The festival house is situated in a beautiful park, and we walked around that park a bit while waiting for the opera to start. The festival house is very functional. Wagner himself made all the specifications he wanted for that house. Good acoustics were the most important thing for him. For example, there are very few ornaments inside the opera house and no cushions on the seats, they are just bare wood with some tissue on them. We were acutally glad we had little cushions with us.

A four o'clock, the opera started. The first act took about one and a half hours, then there was a break of about one hour. The weather was perfect, sunny, but not too warm, so our makeup would not melt away 😉. Our hotel had offered to bring picnic baskets with sandwiches, muffins, fruit, sparkling wine, and water to the festival house during the first break. My mum had ordered one, and so we sat in the grass on a blanket, wearing our fancy clothes and having sandwiches. It was funny anyway seeing all the people dressed in fancy clothes, sitting on benches and in the grass, eating sausage rolls or pretzels.

I don't go to the opera very often, but whenever I go there, I always think the same thing: Opera is a very strange thing. You have to read the story in advance because otherwise you have no clue what is going on as you don't understand what people are singing. Then you sit in there and watch people shout at each other on the stage, while the orchestra is hiding somewhere below the stage. Funny, isn't t?

The second act took another one and a half hours, then we had another break, and then the third act. The opera was finished at 10.30. We caught the shuttle bus back to the hotel, had a drink at the bar, and went to bed. On Saturday morning, we left and took a very nice route through the "Fränkische Schweiz", a really pretty area that I love very much. I used to live in Bayreuth for three years, so I do know the area a bit. We were back home on Saturday night.

Tuesday was an exciting day for me as I had an appointment in hospital. Before going there, I was really worried that the bone would not be mending alright because it hadn't healed properly once and because the leg was still very sore. But the x-ray pictures showed that it was healing alright, and the doctor told me that the pain I felt was normal. He decided that I was allowed to slowly increase weightbearing on my leg. I'm at 20 kg at the moment, and I'm supposed to be back to full weightbearing in four weeks. So another four weeks on crutches. But I was glad that there were no more complications. Please keep your fingers crossed that it goes on like that!

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Photos

The festival house
... functional building in which everything is dedicated to perfect acoustics

Katha
... wearing a fancy dress for the first time in, hm, probably, hm, years?

Mum & Katha
... having a picnic during the first break

Mum and my aunt Lore
... sitting on a blanket in the grass in their fancy clothes

Richard Wagner
... in the park of the festival house

Comments

[Rebi]

Wuuuuh Katha! Das Kleid sieht ja heiß aus! :-) Solltest du öfter tragen! ;-P

[Katha Turbostern]

Re:
Hui, danke! Beim Fliegen wärs allerdings etwas frisch, glaub ich. Ganz zu schweigen vom Startlauf ;-)

[Rebi]

Och nö, brauchst nur ein passendes Gurtzeug! ;-P