Festival and residency offer up an opera feast

Three-year plan to celebrate German composer by presenting his works, with educational and children's activities, Wang Xin reports.

With the Bayreuth Festival coming to Shanghai for the first time, the city will host the festival's only residency program in Asia. It is staging three masterpieces by notable German composer Richard Wagner (1813-83) from 2025 to 2027 and offering audiences an opera feast.

The Bayreuth Festival and Shanghai Grand Theatre unveiled a three-year plan on Dec 10. "Bayreuth in Shanghai "will present Wagner's three major works — Tristan and Isolde, Die Walkure (The Valkyries) and Tannhauser — as well as a series of educational activities and special editions of operas made for children.

Launched by Richard Wagner in 1876, the Bayreuth Festival is one of the top summer art festivals in Europe, focusing on presenting the composer's last 10 works including The Flying Dutchman and Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung). Taking place in July and August at the Bayreuth Festival Theatre in Germany, which the composer helped to design, the festival has been continuously drawing classical music fans from across the world to its 112 editions.