You could always do what I did- just be curious enough to buy an Opera CD or DVD and play it once. I did that in 1994 with an opera called Lohengrin.
Wagner operas are played live all over the world and I have never seen an empty seat. We have flown to Germany three times now to hear some and have spent a week each in Seattle, San Francisco, New York, Flagstaff AZ, Los Angeles, Vienna, Edinburgh and many of those were multiple weeks over a period of years. There were always people from far off places there too- Japan, Australia, South Africa, the UK, Russia etc.
The tickets you receive for Bayreuth have your name on them and they can ask for I.D.
Inside the theater is unlike any other in the way it looks and sounds. The interior is wooden and so the sound is bright and alive. The orchestra is hidden from the audience and the pit goes under the stage.
The band can play very loud but the hood hiding them from view moderates the sound so the singers don't have to scream to be heard-quite the opposite.
The seats have very little cushion but you can rent a cushion from the coat-check. We don't bother.
There is no ornamentation to the inside of the theater-no glitter and luxury. It was just designed to sound good and let everyone see the stage. The audience is steeply raked for this reason.
The stage is big and because half the orchestra is under it the singers and action is closer than in a normal Opera house. They are also at eye level to those at the front (which we were) so no craning your neck looking up at them.
The staging has all the modern technology a theater could wish for and magic happens before your eyes and ears.
Before going in I checked my cameras and would do this on subsequent evenings.
As there is no Air Conditioning in the theater and it was 87 deg. F when we went in, jackets were removed and ties loosened.
You can hear a pin drop as the audience is very attentive. After the performance they cheer wildly or boo if they didn't like the staging. They certainly don't boo the orchestra or chorus which are of a legendary high caliber.
The Bayreuth experience for us is the epitome of a night at the theater.
We exited the building through different doors as I had to swim against the tide to get to the coat-check where my camera bag was held. When I came out to the area where Ciaran was to be waiting I saw that there was a huge rainstorm happening. Thunder and lightning and a sickly yellow sky. No Ciaran and no Carol. I used the umbrella that I had secured in the tripod section so that I could stand out in the rain and be visible. People were huddled under any available shelter and their numbers were dwindling by the minute as fleets of taxis and excursion busses loaded up. I checked my rented Euro phone and there was a text from Ciaran saying that because of the weather when his train arrived he had gone straight to Weihenstephan a 5 minute stroll away. Good thinking!
After ten minutes of walking back and forth I found Carol huddled in a group outside the front door and we shared the umbrella back to the car in the now emptied parking lot. Sanctuary!
The rain stopped a few minutes later and we drove the half mile to Bahnhof Strasse. There was no parking spaces in front of the restaurant so we parked in a nearby side street. No one was dining outdoors tonight as the furniture was soaked and when we checked in the waitress told us our reservation had been moved indoors and there was someone waiting at our table for us.
Ciaran was sharing the table with two German gentlemen who had also been to the Opera. They were eating quietly while we were babbling away, excitedly, talking about the Opera and Bamberg. Plates of hot hearty food arrived and were quickly dispatched.
We got into conversation with the two men at the table who had driven down from Hamburg to see the same three operas as us but they had already been here for a week and would go home the next morning. We talked for about an hour. They were staying at our hotel but declined an offer of a ride home as they wanted to walk. Ditto Ciaran whose hotel was a short walk away.
Back at the hotel I stopped into the bar which is open until 2 a.m or when the last guest staggers off to bed and had a beer while I chatted to Herr Hemmel about finding a ticket for Ciaran for Tannhauser, tomorrow night's Opera. Nothing yet but he was working on it.
A great night of theater, not spoiled by the weather afterwards and made greater by finding our old friend waiting for us at dinner. He had joined us on several of our European trips-in Berlin, on driving tours through Germany and France and on a trip we took to Austria via Munich in 2008. He was now living and working in Lyon, France and had a 13 hour train trek under his belt. It was his first time in Bayreuth.
Time for bed a the end of another great day.....
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