BAYREUTH, a town in the district of Upper Franconia, Bavaria, Germany, 58m. by rail N.E. of Nurnberg. Pop. (1933 ) 36,892. Bayreuth was formerly the capital of an independent principality, annexed in 1791 to the kingdom of Prussia. In 1807 it was ceded to France; and in 18 I o transferred to Bavaria. In Richard-Wagner-strasse is Wagner's house, with his grave in the garden. Franz Liszt 081i-1886) is buried here, as well as Jean Paul Friedrich Richter. Most of the buildings are comparatively modern, the city having suffered severely from the Hussites in 1430 and from fire in 1621. The Stadt-Pfarrkirche (1439) con tains the monuments of the margraves of Bayreuth. The town has an active trade, chiefly in grain and horses. It manufactures woollen, linen and cotton goods, delft and other earthenware. The village of St. Georgen is a suburb to the north-east noted for its marble works.
The Wagner Theatre.—In spite of Wagner's intimacy with King Ludwig II. of Bavaria, the first plan of building a new theatre for the performance of Wagner's operas in Munich was rejected, because Wagner himself disliked the distractions of a large cap ital. Bayreuth possessed the desired seclusion, and the munici pality furthered the scheme. In May 1872, the foundation stone of the Festspielhaus was laid, the event being commemorated by a notable performance of Beethoven's Choral Symphony in the old opera-house. The bulk of the sum for the erection of the theatre was raised by founding "Wagner Societies"" from St. Petersburg (Leningrad) to Cairo, from London to New York; and the theatre was opened in 1876 with the first complete per formance of Der Ring des Nibelungen. The theatre, standing about a mile above the town, is built from plans of Gustav Semper, based on Wagner's ideas.
The second festival (1882) saw the performance of Parsifal under Hermann Levi and Franz Fischer. At later festivals, held about every second year, three works were usually given, Parsifal (which, until copyright expired, could be heard only here) being almost invariably one, but in 1896 the Ring was given alone. Frau Cosima Wagner and her son Siegfried have directed the festivals, and in spite of the high order of the performances, they have been criticized for too rigid adherence to established traditions. There was a festival in 1914, but thereafter the first was in 1924.