Bayreuth, Germany - Enthusiastic applause greeted the new production of Wagner's Parsifal by Norwegian director Stefan Herheim at the opening of the annual Bayreuth Festival Friday evening.
Herheim presented the late work by the composer as images from an excursion through the various stages of German history. It was greeted with approbation by the VIP audience, including Chancellor Angel Merkel.
The audience was less enthusiastic about Conductor Daniele Gatti, whose interpretation of the score drew the occasional boo.
Herheim set the opera in Bayreuth itself, with the backdrop designed by Heike Scheele using Haus Wahnfried, Richard Wagner's villa in the city, as the setting for the antics of high society in the Wilhelmine period.
Berlin - German luxury carmaker Porsche, which holds almost a third of mass producer Volkswagen, is to publish figures for the financial year ending July 31 that will show profits higher than turnover, a news report said Saturday.
Berlin - Radovan Karadzic would have made "a good Nazi," Richard Holbrooke, the US special envoy who brokered the 1995 deal that ended the Bosnian war, has said, following the arrest of the Bosnian Serb leader in Belgrade.
, Germany - Volkswagen is to build the right-hand- drive version of its new Golf model at its main German plant in Wolfsburg, shifting production from its plant at Uitenhage on South Africa's southern coast, the company announced Saturday. 
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