Bayreuth Festival talented conductor Hermann Levi, who was personally chosen by Richard Wagner to conduct the debut of "Parsifal" in 1882 with the assistance of the young Engelbert Humperdinck. Following Wagner's death, his widow Cosima continued running the festival at one or, more frequently, two-year intervals. She gradually introduced the remaining operas which complete the Bayreuth canon of Wagner's last ten completed operas. Levi, the son of a rabbi, remained the festival's principal conductor for the next two decades. Felix Mottl, who was involved with the festival from 1876 to 1901, conducted "Tristan und Isolde" there in 1886. Until the 1920s, performances
Gau Bayreuth Fritz Wächtler in 1935. After Wächtler's execution for defeatism by an "SS" squad in 1945, he became "Gauleiter" himself. Gau Bayreuth Gau Bayreuth (until 1942, "Gau Bayerische Ostmark" (English: Bavarian Eastern March)) was an administrative division of Nazi Germany in Lower Bavaria, Upper Palatinate and Upper Franconia, Bavaria, from 1933 to 1945. From 1926 to 1933, it was the regional subdivision of the Nazi Party for these areas. The Nazi Gau (plural Gaue) system was originally established in a party conference on 22 May 1926, in order to improve administration of the party structure. From 1933 onwards, after the Nazi