Since its inauguration in 1876, the Bayreuth Festival—as both a real and imagined event—has been fundamental to France's reception of Wagner and his music. The festival was the unlikely realization of Wagner's dream to create an annual festival centered around a specially designed theater for the performance of his music dramas, made possible by a benefactor with the will and the funds to support his dream: Ludwig II, king of Bavaria. Long before the Nazi Party appropriated the festival in the 1930s, it was more of a political project than a festival. The establishment of Bayreuth as a German institution was a defining moment in the process of cementing Wagner's permanent place in the life of the German nation. Yet the Germans were not the only visitors to be deeply affected by the festival experience, and this chapter will illuminate the extent to which the festival evoked profound and multilayered reactions from Parisian critics, whose responses went far beyond aesthetic judgement.

Bayreuth in French Musical Life and Imagination

Albert Lavignac's extensive lists of French visitors to Bayreuth between 1876 and 1896—published in his 1897 French guide to Bayreuth—are a clear indication of the exponential growth in popularity of (and perhaps curiosity about) Wagner's music during the last two decades of the nineteenth century. Beginning with fifty-two French visitors at the 1876 Festival, then doubling at the next festival in 1882 and reaching above seven hundred by 1896, Bayreuth rapidly became an important fixture in the French musical calendar. Journals and newspapers regularly sent both Wagnerian and anti-Wagnerian critics to report on the events, including musicians such as Camille Saint-Saëns, who praised Wagner's music and innovative theater design but condemned both “Wagneromania” and “Wagnerophobes.” Saint-Saëns was by no means the only high-profile visitor: important musical, artistic, and literary personalities peppered the audience, including visitors such as Judith Gautier, Catulle Mendès, Ernest Chausson, Léo Delibes, Edouard Dujardin, Vincent d’Indy, Charles Lamoureux, Charles Delagrave, Paul Dukas, Jules Massenet, André Messager, Julien Tiersot, Théodore de Wyzewa, Claude Debussy, and many others. Traveling to Bayreuth and attending the festival quickly became a fashionable ritual in certain Parisian circles. Members of the upper classes liked to be seen at the festival, even if they knew nothing whatsoever about Wagner or his music dramas.