This is the first time in its 145-year history, Bayreuth Opera Festival Opened by a female conductor.
Oksana Lyniv received warm applause from the festival audience at the end of the conductor “The Flying Dutchman” by Richard Wagner.
Due to the pandemic, the festival was forced to take a break last year, postponing Lyniv’s long-awaited debut and increasing enthusiasm for the event.
In the audience is the German Chancellor, Angela MerkelWagner fan and her husband Joachim Sauer, He was labeled the “Phantom of the Opera” for his low-key appearance in Bayreuth during his wife’s tenure.
Merkel’s response to a woman on the podium for the first time was simple: “Finally!”
Lyniv, 43 years old, from Ukraine, was the chief conductor of Graz, Austria opera And the former assistant of Kirill Petrenko, the current principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, when he was working at the Bavarian State Opera.
Katharina Wagner, Richard Wagner’s great-granddaughter and the outgoing director of the festival, said that in the past there were few female conductors to choose from, but Linniff represented “brave enough” to learn to conduct. Of the new generation.
Lyniv told the Berliner Zeitung that what matters in the orchestra is not her gender, but her abilities.
“The orchestra will check in three minutes if you can conduct…it will immediately notice whether you can answer specific musical questions, how well your baton skills are and whether you can lead a hundred people without any worries. If they If you can trust you on this basis, then musicians have no interest in conducting whether they are men or women. Only journalists will do this.”
When asked why she believes that conducting has always been the domain of men, Lyniv said: “It has something to do with the development of society. Until the 1980s, there were still some famous orchestras that did not accept women as musicians. Women are also in society. Disadvantage-think about labor rights. But in the past five years, a lot has happened. The most important opera house is working hard to produce as many as three works led by women.”
The Bayreuth Music Festival will last until August 25 and will be held under strict restrictions on cultural activities to control the coronavirus infection rate in Germany. This year, only about 900 spectators are allowed to watch each show-half of the usual capacity. Seats are restricted to people who have been vaccinated, have recovered from the virus, or tested negative.
