Thielemann makes history as first music director for Bayreuth – with free parking

Christian Thielemann has been officially appointed as music director of the Bayreuth festival, according to the German broadcaster Deutschlandradio. His formal duties will be announced when the festival opens with Katharina Wagner’s new production of Tristan und Isolde on 25 July.

A car-parking space sign saying “Reserved for music director C Thielemann” and erected outside the Festival theatre earlier this week gave a premature clue to the appointment. A Bayreuth spokesperson confirmed the rumours on Monday.

Thielemann was already the festival’s music adviser, but the role of independent music director is unprecedented at Bayreuth. Previously, the presiding Wagner-in-chief of the festival – whether that was Cosima (Richard’s widow), Siegfried (son), Winifred (daughter-in-law), or Wieland and Wolfgang (grandsons) – was de facto music director, having authority over who conducted what and when on the Green Hill.

Even before he conducts a downbeat, Thielemann has already been involved in controversy this year – what the with the stushie over whether or not Eva Wagner-Pasquier was allowed to set foot on the grounds of Bayreuth, over a dispute with her stepsister Katharina – who is an ally of Thielemann’s. Was this the appointment they disagreed about and that led to Eva’s departure?

The Bayreuth festival only runs for a few weeks each summer and Thielemann can’t actually conduct every production, however much he might want to.Yet the appointment might be some kind of personal recompense for not getting the Berlin Philharmonic job, which went to the Bayreuth’s other conducting star of recent seasons, Kirill Petrenko.

Whether this is a Wagnerian sticking plaster over wounded pride, or something more musically meaningful, time will tell. Thielemans’s “Leben Mit Wagner” (life with Wagner, the title of his book) will, however, have a new and decisive chapter. And that all-important parking space.