Israeli orchestra wows Wagner’s Bayreuth

An Israeli orchestra made history on Tuesday by performing a concert in Bayreuth, the spiritual home of Hitler’s favourite composer Richard Wagner, and received a standing ovation.

“It was a joy for us to play Wagner here,” Roberto Paternostro, the conductor of the Israel Chamber Orchestra, said after the first-ever performance by an ensemble from his country in this southern German town.

The concert was not on the official programme the 100th Bayreuth Festival dedicated to Wagner’s works that opened with great pomp on Monday in the concert hall built by the composer in the 1870s on the famed Green Hill.

However, the taboo-breaking event of around two hours, dominated by music by Jewish composers like Gustav Mahler and Felix Mendelssohn but finishing with Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll, has been a major talking point.

Hitler was greatly impressed by the music of Wagner, who died in 1883, with its use of epic Germanic and Norse mythology, becoming a frequent guest of the family and the festival.

Wolfgang Wagner, the composer’s grandson who died in March 2010 aged 90 after running the Bayreuth festival for 57 years, and his siblings used to call the visiting Nazi dictator Uncle Wolf.

The music and the composer have since been widely associated with the Holocaust, and Wagner’s work has been off-limits in Israel.