Bayreuth Festival Bayreuth Festival The Bayreuth Festival () is a music festival held annually in Bayreuth, Germany, at which performances of operas by the 19th-century German composer Richard Wagner are presented. Wagner himself conceived and promoted the idea of a special festival to showcase his own works, in particular his monumental cycle "" and "Parsifal". Performances take place in a specially designed theatre, the Bayreuth Festspielhaus. Wagner personally supervised the design and construction of the theatre, which contained many architectural innovations to accommodate the huge orchestras for which Wagner wrote as well as the composer's particular vision about the staging of his
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