Three decades at the Bayreuth festival: personal account A lot is to be seen and heard in 29 seasons at the Wagner festival. This year’s edition called off, DW’s Rick Fulker has found the time to pull up memories.

Drama onstage and off. Wagner is hard work. By 1991, I was attending the first cycle of performances. That year, Deutsche Welle offered all seven operas of the season in ready-for-broadcast productions for public radio stations in the US – a total of 31 hours of programming.