The opening of the famous Bayreuth Festival in 2020 was different from any previous one! Due to the Corona pandemic the festival couldn't take place as it was originally planned and all opera performances had to be cancelled. Yet, the Festival and local promoter Musica Bayreuth created a special opening concert in the famous “Haus Wahnfried”, the house that Richard Wagner lived in during his Bayreuth years. The Festival’s Music Director Christian Thielemann and members of the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra performed the composer's Siegfried Idyll and were later joined by Finnish soprano Camilla Nylund who sang his Wesendonck Lieder.

Deutsche Grammophon is happy to present this musically outstanding and very special event in cooperation with the Bayreuth Festival and Bayerischer Rundfunk. After five installments of Wagner operas recorded live at the Festspielhaus, which were released on video throughout past years, this is now a rare audio document of a recording made at Haus Wahnfried, where very few recordings have ever been made.

With this project, Deutsche Grammophon and Bayreuth Festival join forces with the Friends of Bayreuth to create an emergency fund which provides financial support to artists who have seen a sharp decrease in their income as a result of the closure of opera houses and concert halls.

The exclusive, multiyear partnership between Deutsche Grammophon and the Bayreuth Festival, in which the Yellow Label is the exclusive audiovisual partner of the mythical Wagner festival, released each edition’s new production on DVD, Blu-ray and eVideo since 2016.

Releases so far include Tristan und Isolde (premiered in 2015), Parsifal (2016), Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (2017), Grammy-nominated Lohengrin (2018) and Tannhäuser (2019).