Bayreuth during the month-long Richard Wagner Festival, commonly known as the Bayreuth Festival. The Festival draws thousands each year, and has persistently been sold out since its inauguration in 1876. Currently, waiting lists for tickets can stretch for 10 years or more. Owing to Wagner's relationship with the then unknown philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, the first Bayreuth festival is cited as a key turning point in Nietzsche's philosophical development. Though at first an enthusiastic champion of Wagner's music, Nietzsche ultimately became hostile, viewing the festival and its revellers as symptom of cultural decay and bourgeois decadence —an event which led him to
Bayreuth Festival the festival into an opportunity for directors to experiment with new methods for presenting the operas. The change came out of necessity, as it was impossible for Wolfgang to both administer and direct the festival. It also provided an opportunity for Bayreuth to renew itself with each production, rather than continue to present the same operas in the same way, year after year. Ingmar Bergman, who famously made a film version in Swedish of Mozart's "Die Zauberflöte", turned down an invitation to direct the festival. The most sensational production in "Werkstatt Bayreuth" was the Centennial Ring Cycle under the direction