The Festivals of Bayreuth and Salzburg are the highlights for every opera director. Who here has successful doesn ´t need any more worries on his career. Salzburg has been always serious. Art has been always in the foreground. That was not always the case in Bayreuth. The riots, scandal, turmoils didn't play a minor role in Salzburg . But the scandal has been part of Bayreuth not only for the days of the Wagnerian German Chancellor A.H.. Also this time more was spoken and written about an eclat than of the music.

He had Frank Castorp, the director directed the Ring des Nibelung in the anniversary year of Wagner 2013. The director has been extremely booed from by the audience. But Castorp had thought up a special resistance. The curtain had fallen, it was the end of the Twilight of the Gods. Frank Castorp entered the stage, on his left and right his management team. He was dressed in a bright summer suit. A storm of the indignation is breaking out now.

Buhs for several minutes. Now Castorp starts his counterattack. Grinning ironically he waves into the audience, shakes his head about so much annoyance, types himself with the forefingers to his forehead to show what meaning he has for his audience. Nothing at all. Marvelous theater which most spectators didn't find funny at all. The ones left nauseated hurriedly the hall, the others shouted more loudly in the choir with the ones who occasionally scream theirs bravos. Marketplace Bayreuth. The conductor Kyrill Petrenko does a little looks throughout the curtain. He tries to end Castorp's appearance and draw him behind the stage. Vain. The curtain raises once again and the festival orchestra appeared. Only now Castorp turns round and disappears, demonstratively with slow steps, behind the stage.

The Berlin director has got his scandal for which he was so much  greeding for. The infuriated reaction of the audience, has had her good reasons, the Ring production has been failed. 

Read more in The New York Times

See some curious snapshots in Bayreuth in these Festival days  by Alex Ross of the New Yorker