The Founding of the Bayreuth Festival

Throughout the nineteenth century, the history of the Wagnerian reception and Wagnerism was closely related both to local music culture and to German developments, which were vigilantly followed in newspapers and by means of tourist and study trips to Germany. In the 1850s, Wagner's plan to perform the Ring tetralogy in an operatic theater specifically built for it had been reported in the newspapers. This project became a central issue for the devotees of Wagner. When money in aid of the Bayreuth Festival House began to be collected through the Wagner societies in 1871, campaigners for the composer throughout Europe knew that the pilgrimage to Wagner would soon become a reality. Then the devotees of music from the Baltic world could also gather in close proximity to their master's art.

The idea of pilgrimage was certainly present in Wagner's mind; the principles of Kunstreligion (art-religion) included the idea that art should not be spread among the public; instead, members of the public should direct themselves toward art. This idea was reinforced by Wagner's efforts to make his art unsuitable for performance in local, hence often modest, conditions. The idea of pilgrimage had already been put forward by Wagner in his novella Eine Pilgerfahrt zu Beethoven (1840), completed during his Paris period: in Beethoven's place, as a great German genius, there would now be Wagner.

Originally, Wagner planned that Munich would be a great center of his music. Having been expelled from the court of Ludwig II at the end of 1865, he came to the conclusion that Munich should be replaced by Nuremberg, which he thought suitable for the performance of Die Meistersinger and, consequently, also for his other forthcoming operas. Nuremberg, however, was to be dismissed in 1869 when Wagner heard from Hans Richter that there was an excellent operatic theater in the town of Bayreuth. Margrave Frederick (1735–63), who was married to Friederike Wilhelmine Sophie, “the favorite sister of Frederick the Great,” had maintained his court at Bayreuth. The young margravine was interested in the arts, and like her brother, she was interested in composing (among other works, the opera Argenore).