Festival 2020 Online

Whoever pays, gets in, they say. But art is free – says the Grundgesetz. So the state must stay out of it when artists are creative. But of course it should pay for art. Because: “Bavaria is a cultural state,” as the Bavarian constitution states. Without state funding for culture, cultural life as we know it in Germany would be unthinkable. This applies all the more to a music theatre festival like the Bayreuth Festival. Is that a contradiction? How free is state-financed art really? And why do dictatorships like the Nazi regime also have an interest in simulating free art? Bernhard Neuhoff (BR-KLASSIK) discusses these questions with the former constitutional judge Prof. Dieter Grimm, who has initiated numerous groundbreaking judgments in matters of freedom of art and opinion. And with the musicologist Prof. Dörte Schmidt, who is researching emigration and cultural life in the post-war period.

Image copyright: Moritz Haase

Here it’s all about art – Bayreuth 1924 and 1951. 50-minute discourse by Bernhard Neuhoff with Barrie Kosky and Julia Spinola deals, among other things, with these topics: What positive aspects can be discovered in the work of the anti-Semite and composer Richard Wagner? How are moral transgressions of the past dealt with? What about the Angstlust in Wagner’s work?

Image Copyright: Moritz Haase

Here it is all about art – political spirit and attitude. In the approximately 50-minute discourse by Björn Gottstein with pianist András Schiff and actress Martina Gedeck, these topics are the focus of attention: Does an artist have to take a political stand? Can art develop freely? Do artists play a special role – and do they have more freedom?

Here it is all about art – Wagner, music and politics. In the approximately 50-minute discourse by Thea Dorn with Daniel Barenboim, topics such as the Staatskapelle Berlin’s concert on 75 years of war’s end during the Corona pandemic, Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk and anti-Semitism, or a philosophical digression on Wagner’s Ring narrative as the history of “learning to die” are addressed.