LittleDaisy's Fotothing

The city is best known for its association with the composer Richard Wagner, who lived in Bayreuth from 1872 until his death in 1883. Wagner's villa, "Wahnfried", was constructed in Bayreuth under the sponsorship of King Ludwig II of Bavaria, and was converted after World War II into a Wagner Museum. To the north of Bayreuth is the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, an opera house specially constructed for and exclusively devoted to the performance of Wagner's operas. The premieres of the final two works of Wagner's Ring Cycle; of the cycle as a whole; and of Parsifal took place here.

Every summer, Wagner's operas are performed at the Festspielhaus during the month-long Richard Wagner Festival, commonly known as the Bayreuth Festival. The Festival draws thousands of attendees each year, and has consistently been sold-out since its inauguration in 1876. Currently, waiting lists for tickets can stretch for up to 10 years or more.

Owing to Wagner's relationship with the then unknown philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, the first Bayreuth festival is situated as a key turning point in Nietzsche's philosophical development. Though at first an enthusiastic champion of Wagner's music, Nietzsche ultimately became hostile, viewing the festival and its revellers as symptom of cultural decay and decadence -- an event which lead him to turn his eye upon the esteemed values of morality held by society as a whole. Nietzsche's book "Human, All-Too-Human" developed out of this experience, a summary of which appears in his late book, "Ecce Homo", and where many of these concerns are expounded upon in garrulous detail.