Wagner opera’s AI backdrop meets loud boos at Bayreuth Festival
3 August 2026, 17:19
The audience voiced disapproval after Wagner gets the AI treatment.
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An AI experiment at the annual Bayreuth Festival has had a less than favourable response from concertgoers.
Richard Wagner’s Götterdämmerung, the fourth and final epic drama in his Ring cycle, was staged as part of the Bayreuth Festival’s 150th anniversary celebrations.
The production featured AI-assisted scenes from previous performances of The Ring cycle as well as historical images including former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and the Twin Towers. It was the first time AI had played a part in the event and, judging by the response, as reported by German news agency dpa, it might be the last.
It is believed that the idea formed when budget constraints changed the original plan to present Wagner’s 10 Bayreuth works, plus Rienzi, to mark the festival’s 150th birthday. The audience booed and whistled when curator Marcus Lobbes came on stage at the end of the performance last Saturday, despite a reported warm response to the musicians and singers.
Read more: PETA cracks down on Berlin State Opera’s use of live animals in staging of Wagner’s ‘Ring Cycle’
Critic Mark Berry described the proceedings as: “The most deserved boos I have ever experienced, for what is quite simply the worst production of anything I have ever seen. May the Almighty preserve us all from ever encountering Marcus Lobbes and his ‘AI curation’ again.”
The Financial Times, meanwhile, described the whole debacle as an “interminable slideshow”.
Götterdämmerung was first premiered in Bayreuth in 1876, as the fourth and final instalment of the composer’s epic project, Der Ring des Nibelungen, or The Ring cycle.
By all accounts, the premiere was considerably more successful than this most recent staging. The festival website states that “every performance will be unique, because the images and associations never stand still.”
