Wagner family fued casts shadow over anniversary

2001-07-24 13:51

Bayreuth - The curtain is set to rise Wednesday on the prestigious Bayreuth Festival, which this year celebrates a double anniversary.

It is exactly 125 years since composer Richard Wagner (1813-1883), not known for his modesty or self-deprecation, launched a festival to celebrate his own mammoth oeuvre in his own life-time.

And it is 50 years since the festival re-emerged from the ashes of the Second World War, reborn and cleansed of its Nazi associations.

But the annual orgy of Wagner's works, which draws thousands of opera lovers to this sleepy town in southern Germany every year, is once again being overshadowed by the long and bitter feud among the composer's descendants for control of the oldest and perhaps best-known summer music festival in the world.

Holding many of the strings in a convoluted and complex plot, worthy - or some say better - than much of what goes on in Wagner's long-winded operas, sits Wolfgang Wagner, the composer's 81-year-old grandson.

And all around him, his siblings, children, nephews and nieces plot, bicker and back-stab in an internecine struggle for power, which bears an often scary resemblance to the plot of perhaps Wagner's greatest work, his sprawling four-opera cycle, the Ring.

This year's festival kicks off on Wednesday with a gala performance of Die Meistersinger von Nuernberg, conducted by Christian Thielemann and directed by Wolfgang himself.

Lohengrin follows on Thursday in a staging by Keith Warner and conducted by Antonio Pappano.

The entire Ring cycle, directed by Juergen Flimm and conducted by Adam Fischer (who replaces the late Giuseppe Sinopoli), comes next with Rheingold on Friday, Die Walkuere on Saturday, Siegfried on Monday and Goetterdaemmerung on Wednesday.

And Thielemann and Wolfgang Wagner team up again for Parsifal on Friday.

The Ring is then repeated twice and the other three operas four times apiece before the festival closes its doors on August 28.

The month-long Wagner Fest is always a glitzy affair, with Germany's dinner-suited and ball-gowned cultural and political elite arriving night after night on Bayreuth's almost mythical "Green Hill" in their black limousines.

And even though critics constantly bemoan the lack of ground-breaking or thought-provoking productions, tickets are sold out up to six years in advance.

But the festival's cultural star could really be waning if the battle for control is not resolved quickly, following the recent departure of a number of top-name singers, including Placido Domingo, Waltraud Meier, Hans Sotin, Kim Begley and Gabriele Schnaut.

Even Juergen Flimm, whose Ring cycle was premiered last year and forms the mainstay of this year's festival, has become increasingly impatient with what he sees as the self-destructive machinations of Bayreuth's management.

In the latest twist to the saga, Wolfgang's 56-year-old niece, Nike, announced last week that she was teaming up with the head of Stuttgart's opera house, Klaus Zehelein, to make a joint leadership bid.

Zehelein, 60, credited with transforming Stuttgart's opera house into one of the most innovative and well-respected in the country, "would be a great opportunity for Bayreuth," Nike said.

Nike's cousin and Wolfgang's estranged daughter by his first marriage, Eva Wagner-Pasquier, had been appointed by the Richard Wagner Foundation to take over as festival director, but announced in June that she would not be available for the position as long as Wolfgang refused to stand down.

Wolfgang has a life-long contract and wants his second wife Gudrun to succeed him until their daughter, Katharina, is old and experienced enough to take over. - Sapa-AFP

- SAPA