Andreas Bauer Kanabas

Katerina Ismailova is wealthily married and lonely, her husband impotent and her father-in-law a tyrant. She is trapped in a world where merciless brutality, despotism and cruelty reign. The woman with a lust for life and love gives way to her raw longing for freedom when a new labourer Sergei starts working for the Ismailov family. She throws herself into a passionate affair with him and poisons her father-in-law's food. But the increasing radicalism of her desire for self-determination will claim further victims...

Opening the 2026 Bayreuth Festival in its 150th anniversary year, this live stream presents Wagner’s Rienzi, his early grand opera and once his greatest success, in the Festspielhaus for the first time. The staging is entrusted to award-winning directors Alexandra Szemerédy and Magdolna Parditka, while Nathalie Stutzmann conducts a superb cast led by Heldentenor Andreas Schager in the title role, with Gabriela Scherer as Irene and Jennifer Holloway as Adriano. With its massed choruses, public spectacle and private tragedy, Rienzi promises to open this landmark Bayreuth Festival in unmissable style.