Festival budget: City spends more than 1.5 million
The city of Bayreuth will pay more than 1.5 million euros for the Bayreuth Festival budget in 2024. This was decided by the city council on Wednesday. Accordingly, the city treasury will provide a good 1.524 million euros for the world-famous festival, the same amount as this year. In the previous year, the city subsidy amounted to 1.573 million euros.
The city is not free in its subsidy for the festival, explained Benedikt Stegmayer, Bayreuth's head of cultural affairs. The amount corresponds to the shares in the Festspiel-GmbH. The federal and state governments and the patrons' association Gesellschaft der Freunde von Bayreuth each hold 29 percent of the GmbH, while the City of Bayreuth holds 13 percent.
However, the distribution of the shares is to change, as the Bavarian state government decided in the summer: because the association had announced that it would pay less for the Festival due to lower income, Bavaria wants the federal and state governments to take over the shares that become available.
Recently, planned savings at the festival had caused a stir. The chorus would have to become smaller and the orchestra would have to make "savings in the six-figure range", the festival management had announced.
Stegmayer told the city council that the festival management was critically scrutinizing all expenditure and making suggestions as to how it could be reduced.
The Bayreuth Music Festival, a renowned opera event, receives a significant portion of its funding from the city's finances, with Bayreuth municipalities allocating over 1.5 million euros for the 2024 event. Despite the financial commitment, the city's share in the Festspiel-GmbH might reduce due to changes in share distribution, as the Bavarian state government aims to take over the shares relinquished by the patrons' association.
Source: www.dpa.com
