Chopin’s Birthday: How Will Bayreuth Respond?
General MusicPublished March 2, 2010 at 12:00 am No Comments
The bicentennial of Chopin’s birthday lasted from February 22nd until March 1st of this year. Over that span of time — the first date being the D.O.B. on Chopin’s baptism certificate and the second being the D.O.B. that he and his family celebrated — 171 hours of Chopin’s music was performed across Poland, his country of birth. You can read this article for additional information about that, because there is a more important matter at hand.
When my friend Ji Nin told me about Chopin’s big celebration, she said, “It’s even longer than Der Ring!” and that got me to thinking… When May 22nd of 2013 rolls around, it will be Wagner’s bicentennial, and there’s no way that Wagnerites are going to let that sissy boy Chopin outdo them. Wagner’s birthday will be celebrated with Wagnerian grandeur.
It is my estimation that come 2013, Wagner’s music will be performed for two hundred years straight, until his quadricentennial (which itself will have a celebration that outdoes his bicentennial). That’s 1,753,162.55 hours of constant music, which handily trumps Chopin’s mere 171.
This amounts to staging two of Wagner’s operas per year.
