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 beauty of Wieland's reinterpretation of his grandfather's works. Wieland's innovative productions invited comparison to Wolfgang's, which critics unanimously found to be uninspired. If Wieland's productions were radical, Wolfgang's were regressive. Although still minimalist in approach, Wolfgang resurrected much of the naturalistic and romantic elements of pre-war productions. Thus, when Wieland died prematurely from lung cancer in 1966, many wondered if Bayreuth had a future. They began to question Bayreuth's primacy among German opera houses, and some suggested that more interesting productions were being staged elsewhere. Around this time (1955), in order to broaden its audience, the whole Bayreuth Festival company