Opera was big in Bayreuth long before Richard Wagner came along. A century and a quarter before he inaugurated his Festspielhaus with his epic “Ring” tetralogy, the Margrave Frederick of Brandenburg-Bayreuth and his wife Princess Wilhelmine of Prussia were laying on the glitz in their Margravial Opera House, built in imitation of Versailles. And how about this? Like Versailles, Wilhelmine opera house is now a UNESCO World Heritage, as Richard’s is not. While watching a show, Wilhelmine preferred the better view from the first row of the orchestra to the court loge, where all eyes were upon her. But she didn’t just watch. Like her brother Frederick the Great, she composed. What’s more, she wrote libretti, acted, and directed. Restored in the late 1900s after centuries of disuse, Wilhelmine’s jewel box is now in its fifth season as a showcase for the Bayreuth Baroque Opera Festival, led by the multitalented countertenor divo Max Emanuel Cencic. His drawing card this season is Ifigenia in Aulide, the work that introduced London to Handel’s formidable Neapolitan rival Nicola Porpora. The drama, familiar from antiquity, revolves around the sacrifice of King Agamemnon’s daughter Iphigenia to raise the winds that will propel the Greek army across the sea to fight the Trojan War. The Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? original cast included the superstar castrati Senesino as the king and Farinelli as Achilles, betrothed to the doomed Iphigenia. This time around, Cencic spells Senesino, opposite Dennis Orellana as the cast-aside groom and Jasmin Delfs as the sacrificial victim. Among much other festive fare, let’s single out Vivaldi’s Orlando Furioso, built around the Ukrainian countertenor phenomenon Yurij Mynenko, plus recitals, banquets, and more. —Matthew Gurewitsch