Wagners wrangle over who is to take over at Bayreuth

The position is not yet vacant, but the Wagner family has stepped up its manoeuvring over who is to take over as Bayreuth Festival founded by Richard Wagner in the late 19th century.

The issue of the succession to 88-year-old Wolfgang, the composer's grandson who has been at the helm of the festival since 1951, has been a matter of controversy, conjecture and often some unseemly familial infighting for a number of years now.

But the wrangling has been given new fuel after Katharina Wagner, Wolfgang's 29-year-old daughter who made her debut at the last festival with a controversial staging of The Master Singers of Nuremberg, staked out her claim over the weekend.

Speaking to the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper, Katharina and Bayreuth conductor Christian Thielemann said they planned to chart a course of "continuity" at the famous annual event.

They ruled out their cousin, Nike Wagner, saying that at 62 she was too old to "develop her own profile" at the festival.

Nike, artistic director of the Weimar Festival, struck back. The proposed "tandem solution" meant there would be no intellectual renewal at Bayreuth, she said.

"Power is what's at issue here, not art," she said in a statement sent to Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Those who know the Wagner family are adamant that Wolfgang will not willingly pass the directorship either to his niece Nike or to his daughter by his first marriage, Eva Wagner-Pasquier, 62.

Katharina believes she has the approval of her father, who has attempted to lay down how the festival will be run after he goes.

"For the first eight years we will only be able only to administer a kind of Wolfgang-Wagner-era bequest," she said, noting that contracts had been signed long in advance with major performers.

She and Thielemann insist they will maintain tradition, while also seeking to breathe new life into the festival by contracting musical greats such as Simon Rattle, Zubin Mehta and Kent Nagano.

"We certainly have no intention of destroying the Bayreuth myth," Katharina said. Only Wagner will be continue to be put on at Bayreuth she insisted, in a clear rejection of some calls for the works of other composers be performed at the world-famous opera house.

But Thielemann, 48, said changes were necessary to keep up with the artistic re-evaluation of the composer's work in other German centres.

"Step by step... It's true that Wagner is now put on everywhere, but there is a crisis over how to direct the works," he said.

He referred to the Nazis' love for Wagner and the close relationship the composer's English-born daughter-in-law Winifred had with Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, who was a frequent guest of the family in Bayreuth. She ran the festival from 1930 until 1944.

Thielemann, who is principal conductor at the Munich Philharmonic, said the tradition of directing Wagner operas had declined in Germany after World War II.

"We want to try to re-establish this directorial tradition in Bayreuth from the bottom once more," Thielemann told the Frankfurter Allgemeine.

Wolfgang has yet to make his position clear. Under his contract he holds the position of Bayreuth director for life after reviving the festival in 1951 with his brother Wieland, who died in 1966.

The final decision lies in the hands of a foundation that includes Wagner family members along with the German federal government, the government of the state of Bavaria and the city of Bayreuth.

The foundation's board meets on November 6. dpa rpm ds