Wagner himself conceived and promoted the idea of a special festival to showcase his own works, in particular his monumental cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen and Parsifal.

A souring of the relationship with his patron, Ludwig II of Bavaria, led to his expulsion from Munich, where he had originally intended to launch the festival.

Nonetheless, the burgermeisters proved open to assisting Wagner with the construction of an entirely new theatre, and the Festival was planned to launch in 1873.

After a fruitless meeting in the spring of 1871 with the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck to obtain funds, Wagner embarked on a fundraising tour across Germany, including Leipzig and Frankfurt.

Despite making direct appeals based on Wagner's role as a composer of the new German Reich, the Societies and other fundraising channels were well short of the needed sum by the end of 1872.

In January 1874, Ludwig granted 100,000 Thaler and construction on the theatre, designed by architect Gottfried Semper, started shortly thereafter.

Later in the construction of the theatre, architect Carl Brandt expanded Semper’s double proscenium to six pairs of proscenia, and also created its amphitheater shape.

Present at this unique musical event were Kaiser Wilhelm, Dom Pedro II of Brazil, King Ludwig (who attended in secret, probably to avoid the Kaiser), and other members of the nobility, as well as the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche who committed much effort to helping his then good friend Wagner establish the festival,[5] and such accomplished composers as Anton Bruckner, Edvard Grieg, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Franz Liszt, and the young Arthur Foote.

("Something has taken place at Bayreuth which our grandchildren and their children will still remember", wrote Tchaikovsky, attending the Festival as a Russian correspondent.)

Wagner abandoned his original plan to hold a second festival the following year, and travelled to London to conduct a series of concerts in an attempt to make up the deficit.

Although the festival was plagued by financial problems in its early years, it survived through state intervention and the continued support of influential Wagnerians, including King Ludwig II of Bavaria.

Another was the 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.

She gradually introduced the early operas which complete the Bayreuth canon of Wagner's last ten mature works.

Not a note was "cut" from any of the enormous scores; no concessions were made to the limits of human patience on the part of the audiences.

His early death in 1930 left the Festival in the hands of his English-born wife Winifred Wagner, with Heinz Tietjen as artistic director.

She and other festival leaders were members of Nazi chief ideologue Alfred Rosenberg's Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur, which actively suppressed modernist music and works by "degenerate" artists.

Winifred's influence with Hitler was so strong that at her behest, he wrote a letter to anti-fascist Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini, inviting him to lead the festival.

It was in Nazi Germany that the festival made its first break from tradition, abandoning the deteriorating 19th century sets created by Richard Wagner.

During the war, the festival was turned over to the Nazi Party, which continued to sponsor performances for wounded soldiers returning from the front.

During the 1970s, Winifred Wagner was repeatedly petitioned to install a memorial to the Jewish singers at the Bayreuth Festival who had been murdered in concentration camps.

The court also banned her from administration of the Bayreuth Festival and its assets, which fell eventually to her two sons, Wolfgang and Wieland.

[7] Wieland defended the changes as an attempt to create an "invisible stage" that would allow the audience to experience the full psychosocial aspects of the drama without the baggage and distraction of elaborate set designs.

Others have speculated that by stripping Wagner's works of their Germanic and historic elements, Wieland was attempting to distance Bayreuth from its nationalistic past and create productions with universal appeal.

In 1973, faced with overwhelming criticism and family infighting, the Bayreuth Festival and its assets were transferred to a newly created Richard Wagner Foundation.

Ingmar Bergman, who famously made a film version in Swedish of Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, turned down an invitation to direct the festival.

In the end, Wolfgang's decision to bring in experimental directors helped rejuvenate Bayreuth and restore its reputation as the world leader in Wagnerian opera.

[13] They were chosen ahead of the pair of their cousin, Nike Wagner, and Gerard Mortier, who had placed a late bid for the directorship on 24 August.

The process entails submitting an order form every summer; applicants are usually successful after about ten years.

[30][31] Schwarz's modern staging of the cycle— depicting a complex, tangled family drama spanning generations—was met with mixed reviews from audiences and the press.