‘This is asking a lot of the buttocks’: my 23-hour Wagner marathon on a rock hard seat in a heatwave

How does it feel to be locked into a venue notorious for its unpadded seating to experience a full-throttle Ring cycle and more? Our critic found out at the 150th anniversary of the mighty Bayreuth festival Liszt and Bruckner were there from the start. Debussy, Mahler and Puccini all subsequently made the journey. So did writers from Virginia Woolf and Thomas Mann to WEB Du Bois, not to mention choreographer Sergei Diaghilev, anarchist Emma Goldman, British fascist Diana Mosley (wife of Oswal...

By Flora Willson