Wagner's family booed at opera
2006-01-10 08:27
Berlin - Katharina Wagner, the 27-year-old great granddaughter of composer Richard Wagner, was booed at the premiere of her new production of Giacomo Puccini's three one-act operas, Il Trittico, in the Deutsche Oper Berlin on Sunday.
Katharina, tipped to head the world-famous Bayreuth festival when her 86-year-old father Wolfgang Wagner steps down, was loudly booed by the glittery first-night audience, while the soloists, including Cristina Gallardo-Domas as Sister Angelica, and conductor Stefano Ranzani, received rapturous applause.
In the audience was Wolfgang Wagner himself, German President Horst Koehler and Berlin's mayor, Klaus Wowereit.
Il Trittico (The Triptych) comprises three one-act operas, each about one hour long, that are loosely interlinked by themes of morality.
Themes of death and dying
The evening started with Suor Angelica (Sister Angelica), a rather saccharine piece about a noblewoman who was banished to a convent after having an illegitimate child. When she learns of the death of the child, she kills herself in hope of joining him in heaven.
The next part was Gianni Schicchi, a comic masterpiece about greedy, conniving relatives and their efforts to get their hands on the will of a deceased miser.
The evening ended with Il Tabarro (The Cloak), which tells of a clandestine affair between Giorgetta, wife of the barge owner Michele, and the stevedore Luigi. When Michele finds out, he stabs Luigi to death and conceals the body in his cloak.
It was only the fourth time that Katharina has directed an opera and the first time that she has staged an opera in Berlin, which boasts three major opera houses, the Deutsche Oper in the west and the Staatsoper and Komische Oper in the former communist east.
Bitter dispute
Katharina made her directing debut in 2002 with a surprisingly irreverent, but ultimately patchy reading of Wagner's Der fliegende Hollaender (The Flying Dutchman) in Wuerzburg.
The follow-up was a staging in Budapest of another Wagner opera Lohengrin in 2004.
Next came a staging of a little-known work, Der Waffenschmied (The Armourer) by Albert Lortzing, at the Gaertnerplatz theatre in Munich in 2005, which was mercilessly panned by the critics.
And Katharina Wagner is scheduled to direct a new production of Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nuernberg (The Meistersinger of Nuremberg) in the composer's holy of holies, the legendary Festspielhaus in Bayreuth in 2007.
In fact, the series of high-profile engagements appears to be fast-track training for Katharina Wagner to take over the running of the Bayreuth Festival, the annual month-long summer music festival dedicated exclusively to the works of her great-grandfather, when her white-haired and autocratic father retires.
The Wagner family is bitterly divided over who should run the festival, with Wolfgang's other daughter by an earlier marriage, Eva Wagner-Pasquier, and Nike Wagner, the daughter of Wolfgang's late brother Wieland, both laying claim to the throne on Bayreuth's fabled Green Hill.
Despite her youth and the mixed reception of her directing projects so far, Katharina Wagner appears to be gaining a substantial lead over her half-sister and cousin, both nearly twice her age, in the succession race, observers believe.