in New York, but continued to appear as a guest artist in Vienna and elsewhere, and became a pillar of the Bayreuth Festival. He conducted the first performances of Der Ring des Nibelungen at the festival's post-war reopening in 1951. He was outspoken in his dislike of Wieland Wagner's frugal and minimalist productions, but returned to the festival most years for the rest of his life. He was most associated there with Parsifal: of his 95 appearances at Bayreuth, 55 of them were conducting it. He worked mainly in Germany and Austria, but conducted in Paris from time to time, including a 1956 Tristan und Isolde with Astrid Varnay at the Opéra. He returned to the Bavarian State Opera in 1954, and continued to conduct there for the rest of his life. In 1955 he returned to the Vienna State Opera, to conduct Der Rosenkavalier as one of the productions given to mark the re-opening of the theatre. In 1964 Knappertsbusch had a bad fall, from which he never fully recovered. He died on 25 October the following year at the age of 77, and was buried in the Bogenhausen cemetery in Munich. He was greatly mourned by his colleagues. In 1967, the record producer John Culshaw wrote: Reputation and legacy Knappertsbusch, known familiarly as "Kna", was described as a ruppiger Humanist ("rough humanist"). He was capable of ferocious tirades in rehearsal – usually at singers: he got on much better with orchestras. Culshaw wrote of him: Recordings Knappertsbusch did not take the gramophone as seriously as some of his colleagues did. Although he was praised for such recordings as his 1931 Munich version of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony ("a monument of unfaltering fire", according to one reviewer), he was not at home in the recording studio. Culshaw wrote: For Decca, Knappertsbusch recorded mostly with the Vienna Philharmonic, but also with the London Philharmonic, the Paris Conservatoire Orchestra, the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra and the Suisse Romande Orchestra. Wagner, including a complete studio recording of Die Meistersinger, predominated, but also included were works by Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, Schubert, Strauss (Johann and family as well as Richard), Tchaikovsky and Weber. Recordings made for RIAS feature Knappertsbusch conducting the Berlin Philharmonic in symphonies by Beethoven (No. 8), Bruckner (No. 8 and No. 9), Haydn (The Surprise), and Schubert (The Unfinished). The same forces recorded The Nutcracker Suite and Viennese dance and operetta music. Some