A new twist in the fight for control of the Bayreuth Festival overshadowed the start of the month-long Richard Wagner marathon this week.
Mr Wolfgang Wagner, the 81year-old grandson of the composer, unveiled a five-year plan of new productions and said he would ignore attempts by the Wagner Foundation to replace him as festival director.
"I'm only thinking of the Bayreuth Festival," he said on Thursday.
Last March his estranged daughter, Ms Eva Wagner-Pasquier, was nominated by the Wagner Foundation to head the festival. However, her lawyer said recently that she was no longer interested in the position, having "grossly underestimated her father's hard-headedness".
Politicians on the board are anxious to rejuvenate the publicly subsidised event and end the family feud which has created a sour atmosphere that is beginning to deter star performers.
Last week, Mr Wolfgang Wagner's niece, Ms Nike Wagner, re-entered the frame as the most likely successor, planning to modernise the festival and perform new works.
"The fact that a geriatric Wagner grandchild heads the institution in question may be historically admirable, but it doesn't drive intellectual and aesthetic innovation," she said.
Unless his wife, Gudrun, succeeds him, Mr Wagner says he will not end his life contract as festival director.
His niece replied that like Siegfried in the dragon's blood, "Wolfgang Wagner has bathed in contract paper and has scaly skin from that".
The succession battle will come to a head next September, but until then the Battle of Bayreuth will continue. The Bayreuth Festival was launched 125 years ago.
