Bayreuth without drama is like Wagner without Brünnhilde: possible but pointless. This year the biggest drama at the world's most notorious music festival was not the five-hour music-mythology mish-mash on-stage, nor the backstage backbiting among the Wagner family that can put the Southfork Ewings to shame. No, the drama was in the audience.
Twitter, not known for its Wagnerian preferences, lit up on Saturday night with news of the collapse of a real-life Wagner heroine: Angela Merkel.
The German leader had arrived hours earlier as usual for the premiere of Tristan and Isolde. As usual, journalists pointed out that the leader had worn her outfit to Bayreuth before. As usual, opinions were divided on whether this was fashion faux pas or a clever mix of thrift and political stage-management.
As usual no one pointed out that her husband Joachim Sauer – and all the men around her – have been wearing the same tuxedoes to Bayreuth for years.
Never mind, into the fray and a new production of Tristan and Isolde by the composer's descendant Katharina Wagner.
To the chagrin of the Bayreuth booers, a small but passionate bunch, the production – only the seventh since the festival’s founding in 1876 – was reportedly better than many were expecting, particularly given Ms Wagner’s roundly panned directorial debut in 2007.
By all accounts the evening went remarkably smoothly, too, despite a last-minute walkout by the singer playing Isolde, Anja Kampe. Her replacement, Evelyn Herlitzius did a bang-up job, with critics praising her "glowing precision" as Tristan's love interest.
So if all went well, where was the drama? What’s the point of Bayreuth without drama? We must have drama.
As if on queue Angela Merkel, a long-term Wagner fan, achieved a life-long ambition of causing headlines in Bayreuth. But not for her singing voice, and also not for swooning at the melodies of Hitler’s favourite composer.
So what were these reports of her “collapse”? Calls to the Bayreuth theatre and her spokesman in Berlin it emerged that it wasn’t Dr Merkel who collapsed but, in the first interval, her chair. The chancellor is doing well despite the excitement, we hear. To calm the Twitter flutter, her office issued a statement saying she liked the production “very much”.
As for the chair? No news yet on its condition. No doubt it was just a moment of weakness in the presence of greatness.
