# Rienzi review – Wagner’s early opera makes its Bayreuth debut as frenzied contemporary election drama

- URL: https://talkfuse.com/story/rienzi-review-wagners-early-opera-makes-its-bayreuth-debut-as-frenzied-contemporary-election-drama/
- Published: 2026-07-27T12:20:04+00:00
- Updated: 2026-07-27T12:33:27+00:00
- Original publisher: The Guardian (publisher lean: Left)
- Original article: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2026/jul/27/rienzi-review-bayreuth-wagner-stutzmann-schager
- Topics: Americas, Culture, Elections, Europe, Politics, World

## Key points

- Wagner's Rienzi debuts at Bayreuth for the festival's 150th anniversary season
- Staging recasts it as a modern election drama, criticised as overstuffed
- Jennifer Holloway's Adriano praised as the standout of a strong cast

## Summary

Wagner's early opera Rienzi has received its first ever staging at the Bayreuth festival, opening the 150th anniversary season as an exception to the festival's usual canon of his 10 "mature" works. The opera has long been avoided at Bayreuth partly because it was Adolf Hitler's favourite work and because no authentic complete score survives, its handwritten manuscript having been given to Hitler and subsequently lost. The production, directed by Alexandra Szemerédy and Magdolna Parditka, reimagines 14th-century Rome as a dystopian near-future and casts the story as a frenzied contemporary election drama referencing recent US politics, though the review judges the staging overloaded with ideas.

Conductor Nathalie Stutzmann was praised for bringing tenderness and grandeur to a score that mixes French grand-opera scale with an Italianate sound and only occasional hints of Wagner's mature style. Andreas Schager led a strong cast as Rienzi with a powerful but largely unvaried tenor, supported by Andreas Bauer Kanabas, Michael Nagy and Gabriela Scherer, while Jennifer Holloway's reworked, "soft-butch lesbian" take on Adriano was singled out as the standout performance.

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Summarised by TalkFuse (https://talkfuse.com/). Quote the original publisher for the reporting and link this page for the summary and discussion.