Bayreuth 8

I continue to have remarkable luck in evading the sometimes heavy rainshowers. Today I was in the old baroque opera house, at a fascinating exhibit of all the Ring stage sets since 1876, and then generally admiring the interior, which is lavishly decorated in high Baroque style. It's pretty fabulous but I can see why Wagner though it inappropriate for his world-myths. Oddly enough most of the postcards around town are of the baroque theater and not the Festspielhaus, undoubtedly because it's more picturesque. There seem to be only a limited number of postcards available of the town, since you see the same ones everyplace: lots of the baroque theater, a few of the Festspielhaus, then Ludwig II and the Wagners in various combos, and then sort of kitschy cartoons of Ring scenes. I should have brought a camera.
In some ways the rain is a good thing, since it keeps the temperatures in the Festspielhaus comfortable. The lack of armrests isn't a problem either; I thought I would be squeezed between gelatinous Germans but in fact I am less cramped side-to-side than in most American opera houses. (In any event my seatmates turned out to be other members of the Wagner Society and not some of the absurdly dressed women with trains and scarves and whatnot that would spread out too much. While I'm on costume: I don't understand why men would go to the trouble of wearing formal evening dress only to have the scooping necklines of their undershirts clearly visible through their thin shirts. As usual I'm left wondering what people are thinking, though I'm sure some are wondering what I'm doing. I don't see that many colored or striped shirts. Another thing I've noticed here: walking the streets you see almost no one wearing hats, and by hats I mean baseball-style caps. It wasn't until today that I saw a couple, and those were on very young boys.) Back to the Festspielhaus (which is what we do here, go back to the Festspielhaus): except for the painfully hard seats, it's actually quite comfortable, which I realize is a lucky chance due to the poor weather.
Once again I'm getting this wonderful Charles Ives effect here in the lobby, with the Pilgrim's chorus from Tannhauser playing against a cocktail-bar version of Take the A Train. Fortunately no one is currently smoking in the lobby: I think that maybe the Germans don't smoke that much more than Americans, they just have even fewer rules about where it's prohibited. It's very odd, as if it's America 40 years ago. They seem more advanced than us in many ways (national health care, heavily subsidized arts --well, I hear that's being cut back, vacations that start at a month long, national leaders who are not buffoons and international war criminals) that it seems surprising they're so far behind in this regard.
By the time I figure out this keyboard (the z/y switch continues to plague me) I'll be leaving and messed up for my American keyboards. Travel is very broadening!