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August 17, 1876
The premiere of Götterdämmerung by Richard Wagner (pictured) closed the first Bayreuth Festival.
Götterdämmerung
Götterdämmerung, WWV 86D, is the last of the four epic music dramas that constitute Richard Wagner's cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen. It received its premiere at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus on 17 August 1876, as part of the first complete performance of the whole work.
Bayreuth Festival
The Bayreuth Festival is a music festival held annually in Bayreuth, Germany, at which performances of stage works by the 19th-century German composer Richard Wagner are presented. Wagner himself conceived and promoted the idea of a special festival to showcase his own works, in particular his monumental cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen and Parsifal.