Von Trier, the director of such films as Dogville and The Idiots, was a controversial choice for the project, but festival director Wolfgang Wagner, the grandson of the composer, has been trying to breathe some new life into the event.
No less of an unconventional choice, Dorst is best known for political plays such as Die Kurve ("The Curve") and Merlin, oder das w‹ste Land ("Merlin, or the Waste Land"), a monumental six-hour drama about, according to the playwright, "the failure of the utopias."
"The offer from Bayreuth surprised me, and I was frightened at first," Dorst told the Berlin daily paper Tagesspiegel, "but my advantage is that I don't have to continue a career as an opera director."