Richard Wagner of the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg, who thought the work "divinely composed", and that of the French newspaper "Le Figaro", which called the music "the dream of a lunatic". Amongst the disillusioned were Wagner's friend and disciple Friedrich Nietzsche, who, having published his eulogistic essay "Richard Wagner in Bayreuth" before the festival as part of his "Untimely Meditations", was bitterly disappointed by what he saw as Wagner's pandering to increasingly exclusivist German nationalism; his breach with Wagner began at this time. The festival firmly established Wagner as an artist of European, and indeed world, importance: attendees included Kaiser Wilhelm I,
Bavarian State Orchestra premiere of his opera "Idomeneo", written in Munich. During the 1860s the orchestra, by then an integral part of the "Hofoper" (Court Opera), gave the world premieres of the Wagner operas "Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg", "Tristan und Isolde", and "Das Rheingold", followed in 1870 by "Die Walküre". Hans von Bülow was active as conductor at that time. Upon the German Revolution of 1918–1919 the name changed again, to its present form, reflecting the demise of the Bavarian monarchy. The Bavarian State Orchestra is today part of the Bavarian State Opera company, Germany's largest, which it serves as pit ensemble, based