The retirement of ailing Wolfgang Wagner as director of the Bayreuth festival has cleared the way for a bitter dynastic battle over control of an event seen as a Wagner family heirloom
THE CURTAIN FELL on this year's Wagner festival on Thursday, but the real drama begins on Monday when an internecine battle for control in Bayreuth enters its endgame.
Founded in 1876 by the composer, Richard Wagner, the annual festival is the home of the composer's operas, from Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg to the marathon Ring cycle. Two branches of the Wagner family have been feuding for years over ultimate control of the festival, a lively disagreement that has become as much a part of Bayreuth as Brunhilde, Siegfried and decade-long waiting lists for tickets.
But the offstage drama has generated uncertainty and nervousness among the devoted world community of Wagnerians about the future of one of the world's oldest and greatest music festivals.
The succession battle is now poised to break out in earnest following the departure last week after 57 years of the ailing festival director, Wolfgang Wagner, the 88-year-old grandson of the composer.
On Monday morning, the foundation that manages the festival will discuss two rival takeover proposals by two warring family factions. Only one can be awarded the jewel in Germany's arts crown.
The roots of the feud go back to 1966 and the sudden death of Wieland Wagner, a grandson of the composer and co-director of the festival with his brother, Wolfgang. After burying his brother, Wolfgang took sole control of the festival. Wieland Wagner's children say they were shut out.
Nike Wagner, Wieland's daughter, tried to assert herself in Bayreuth in 2001, but her uncle, Wolfgang, brushed her off. The foundation that finances the festival insisted that he retire, but Wolfgang rejected its demand and its choice of successor, his estranged daughter, Eva Wagner-Pasquier. He said he would remain on as director for life unless he could choose his own successor.
His choice was his second wife, Gudrun, 20 years his junior and de facto festival boss for years, who was to be followed eventually by their 30-year-old daughter, Katharina.
That plan was thrown into disarray last November when Gudrun died suddenly. With echoes of the previous succession, Katharina Wagner moved quickly to establish herself as the festival's director-in-waiting. After presenting her first Bayreuth production, a middling Meistersinger, she joined forces with Bayreuth conductor Christian Thielemann and the two presented themselves as the creative duo to save Bayreuth.When that failed to convince the doubters, she brought on board her estranged half-sister, Eva.
The plan found qualified approval in Germany's feuilleton pages and, after Wolfgang Wagner promised to stand aside for the trio, the succession battle was considered resolved. Until, that is, Nike Wagner announced this week that she was launching a rival bid to wrest control of the festival back from Wolfgang Wagner's family.
Days before the departure of her uncle, she presented an eleventh-hour plan to revive Bayreuth with the help of Gérard Mortier, head of the Opéra National de Paris.
The duo have plenty of experience: Nike is festival director of the annual Weimar arts festival. Mortier, meanwhile, is an old hand othe European arts scene, transforming the Salzburg Festival and the Ruhr Triennale into top cultural events.
Their plan has created a stir in Bayreuth and beyond. Mortier didn't mention the plan to his employers in Paris or to the New York City Opera, his new home from next year.
On Monday, Nike Wagner and Mortier will present their seven-page proposal to the festival's governing body. Plans include a second mini-season in June and a loosening of the ban on performing works by other composers.
Whoever takes over the festival will have to tread a fine line between Wagner traditionalists, who loudly boo any new takes on the composer's works, and a younger, avant-garde crowd who have welcomed recent, more irreverent productions.
Katharina has already tried to present herself as a moderniser at this year's festival, getting her father's consent for live public screenings in the Bayreuth fairground, along with a live internet broadcast.
Nike Wagner, meanwhile, promises to do the near-impossible: respect the Wagner tradition while taking the festival into the future. She has suggested that she would prefer a good festival head than a second-rate head with the Wagner name. But after years on the sidelines, she claims that she has earned a chance to prove herself.
"I think that Wieland Wagner's offspring should never have been excluded. This family consists of more tribes than just Wolfgang Wagner's tribe," Nike said in a newspaper interview. "I'm concerned about how Bayreuth will continue in the future, and I'm engaged in this problem, and I want the best possible leadership. This has priority. And then come the tribe and the Wagner business."
The foundation, with appointees from the family and from several levels of German government, will have a difficult task deciding between the two factions.
Irish Wagnerians, such as Gemma Hussey, predict a drawn-out battle between the Nike and Katharina camps. Just returned from Bayreuth, Hussey says the feeling is that Nike's connections with Gérard Mortier might give her the edge, while there is little positive reaction to be heard about Katharina Wagner and her production of Meistersinger.
"I would hope Nike gets it," says Hussey. "I was fortunate enough to have dinner with her when the Ring came to Limerick. She was madly irreverent about the Wagner family and very refreshing. But the festival will continue one way or the other."
