This edition reconstructs the Bayreuth Festival casts until 1906 – the end of the Cosima era – as comprehensively as possible, and presents the complete extant vocal legacy of early Bayreuth: 93 singers in more than 300 recordings!

Some singers are comprehensively documented (Ernst Kraus), of others only rudimentary fragments have survived (Hans Breuer). For some important festival singers there are hardly any recordings of roles they sang in Bayreuth (Johanna Gadski) or no Wagner recordings at all (F von Kraus). Frequently only fleeting snippets have survived (Luise Reuß-Belce). Some recordings were made very much later, when the singers had long since ceased appearing in Bayreuth and when they were in vocal decline (Theodor Bertram).

An additional drop of vermouth is the totally inadequate studio orchestra, drastic cuts or helter-skelter speeds due to the limited playback duration of the records, as well as subsequently composed concert endings and the primitive recording technology. And yet: in their totality, these documents give a sharp, vivid idea of the style of singing favoured during the Cosima era.

We have endeavoured to arrange the recordings as ”opera highlights” with the casts up to 1906, to reconstruct easy listenable, fictitious performances with an additional factor: if singers who had made their debut in Bayreuth by 1906 appeared there later on in roles which they recorded, they were also included (Clarence Whitehill as Amfortas 1908, Paul Knüpfer as Pogner 1912…). Recordings which could not be slotted into the ”opera highlights” are added as bonus titles.

Contents:
CD 1 Der fliegende Holländer
CD 2 Tannhäuser
CD 3 Lohengrin
CD 4 Tristan und Isolde
CD 5 Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
CD 6 Das Rheingold · Die Walküre I/II
CD 7 Die Walküre II/III · Siegfried I/II
CD 8 Siegfried III · Götterdämmerung
CD 9 Parsifal
CD 10 Bayreuth Festival Singers 1876-1894
CD 11 Bayreuth Festival Singers 1894-1899
CD 12 Bayreuth Festival Singers 1901-1906