Dinner after the show

At the end of act III of Tannhauser with the orchestra wailing and over 100 men and women singing on stage and the two main characters lying dead at our feet the crowd erupted in a frenzy of pent-up applause for in Wagner music there is no applauding until the curtain has fallen. They cheer and stomp their feet on the bare wooden floor and it's deafening and exciting to be a part of it.

Due to the ingenious theater design you get out of there as fast as you got in as each side door serves only 4 rows of seats, and only half of that as there are matching doors on the other side of the theater. There is no center aisle which forces people into a long bottleneck as in other opera houses. You are out of there in about 3 minutes tops and into the fresh night air. The opera which began at 4 pm sharp is over by 9.30 pm and that included two 1 hour intermissions-so it's a short Wagner opera as some last over 5 hours and get out around 11 p.m. If you have a short attention span it may not be for you.

So you are out there on a warm August evening, catching smatters of chatter from excited people who got what they came for- an unforgettable, emotion-drenched evening of fascinating music.
People are smiling, elated, refreshed.

They are also hungry and so are we. We had made a reservation at a restaurant just up the hill a 5 minute walk. It is called the Burgerreuth. No it doesn't serve burgers. It serves Italian food but not the Mamma's Tomato Sauce kind. Northern Italian I would say. We chose it for it's proximity (singers go there after the show) and it's vast outdoor dining patio. Great ambience. I would go back for that.
It is pricier than a typical German pub/restaurant like Weihenstephan- 20 Euro plates as opposed to 12 E with a somewhat limited menu which made choosing a two-beer affair. The food wasn't as stellar as Weihenstephan but we were too pumped up after the show to let it bother us.

Ciaran was exhilarated after his first Bayreuth experience. We had tickets for one more performance-the opera that started it all for me with Wagner-Lohengrin which everyone in the Western Word has heard at least one tune from...we know it as "here comes the Bride" as it is played at weddings.

Now it was time to unwind over a few beers and some hearty food.

We drove back to the hotel and once there Ciaran and I felt the need for a nightcap so we bade Carol goodnight and set off on foot for Weihenstephan. There we sat outside and had a couple of beers and relived the performance we had just seen. We made a plan to meet up in the morning and go downtown for a walk, which would inevitably lead to Wagner's house again. It's not where he died-he died while visiting Venice in 1883-but it's where he lived from 1872 and put together the first Bayreuth Festival in 1876 where the "Ring" was first played in it's entirety (15 hours of new music that is still playing around the World.) It's the most expensive undertaking for an opera company-both Los Angeles and new York's Metropolitan Opera have recently mounted $30 million productions and are now taking in laundry to help pay for the bank loans.

We parted at the restaurant and each made his way home over dark but safe streets.