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Outside, in hour-long intervals between the acts, half the audience takes dinner in chintzy restaurants while the rest mills around the grounds, flaunting designer outfits and jewellery. Usually, there is not much else to do. This year, however, an exhibition has been installed on the lawns — and its title nearly knocks me off my feet.

Verstummte Stimmen ("Silenced Voices") is a comprehensive account of Richard Wagner's inflammatory anti-Semitism, of his family's Nazism and of the many Jewish artists who were driven out of Bayreuth before and after 1933, some to their deaths in Nazi extermination camps. Members of the audience study each panel with the same concentration they apply to the live performance, and often with white-faced shock. The truth, it seems, is out. Bayreuth has shaken the skeletons out of its closet and is preparing to face the 200th anniversary of Wagner's birth with a clean slate. A further segment of the exhibition, detailing Wagner's noxious influence on German politics, continues in the town hall. Witnessing Verstummte Stimmen, I am relieved and happy to be in Bayreuth.

But all in Wagner is never as it seems. Next morning I ask a flack in the Festspielhaus for a copy of the exhibition texts. "Can't help you," he shrugs. "It's a town hall thing. Nothing to do with us." I beg your pardon? "This is not a festival exhibition."

Of course not. The democratic town of Bayreuth may be keen to come to terms with its unsavoury past, but the Wagners cannot budge. So long as the family controls the festival, it will remain tainted by crimes against humanity. I won't go back.

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Tom Whittaker
September 4th, 2012
7:09 AM
It is enough of a sin to go there, regardless of excuses. No conductor is worth an interview in Bayreuth.

Peter hayden
September 3rd, 2012
5:09 PM
Well I had a good laugh reading that. Its not only hypocrisy its pompous sanctimonious sloganising. Wagner may have been a dreadful man but at least he wrote wonderful music. I am not sure what your contribution is. Do you really think Wagner has any current influence on German political life. If so please give some evidence? I would ask more questions but they are mostly answered in academic journals which I suggest you (re)read.

Lorna Salzman
September 2nd, 2012
11:09 PM
I think it is silly and purposeless to boycott Bayreuth. Wagner himself is dead so we can't teach him a lesson. Unless the writer has evidence that the living Wagner family members, including the co-directors, had or have Nazi sympathies, then he is doing nothing more than making a statement about his moral superiority: "I detest Nazism and anti-Semitism...I'm a good moral person, unlike Richard and Winifred Wagner". So how does this distinguish HIM from the Eva and Katerina? Or from the rest of us who also detested Hitler and Nazism? This kind of statement is just puffed up ego and moral righteousness to no end whatsoever.

Dave Rosenbaum
September 2nd, 2012
2:09 PM
Unless, of course, somebody else gives you their free tickets. Talk about hypocrisy!

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