BAYREUTH (dpa) – The dispute over who will succeed Wolfgang Wagner as head of the Richard Wagner opera festival has long kept another issue about the festival’s future in the background – finances.
Two and a half years after the Social Democrat-Greens government in Berlin shocked everybody by saying it intended to stop the federal state’s financial contribution to the opera festival, a new debate is now in full swing in Bayreuth about its financial future.
American arts patron Alberto Vilar has declared he will cover the complete material costs for next year’s new production of “Tannhaeuser”.
This gesture however can only partially gloss over the growing structural problems in the festival’s future financing.
The federal government, after stormy protests, has in the meantime dropped its aim to pull out from Bayreuth altogether. But instead, it has frozen its contributions at 1999 levels. The result of this limit is becoming clearer in view of the rising costs from year to year.
Now Karl Gerhard Schmidt, the chairman of the Wagner festival patrons society “Friends of Bayreuth”, is demanding that the Berlin government “step down from its position imbedded in concrete”.
By freezing the federal subsidy at 3.22 million marks (1.46 million dollars) through the year 2003, the decades-long system of one-third outside financing is losing its balance.
The State of Bavaria has had to boost its subsidy to help meet the rising costs, and so has the other group making up one-third of the financing – the city of Bayreuth, the administrative district of Upper Franconia, and the Friends of Bayreuth patrons society.
Last year, this latter group uncomplainingly absorbed a financing shortage of 41,000 marks. But this year the figure has surged to 125,000 marks, and in 2002, the gap is expected to nearly double to 227,000 marks.
“The city and district are no longer prepared to go along,” says patrons society chairman Schmidt, which means that the Friends of Bayreuth will be called on to plug the financial hole.
The patrons society does command considerable resources and takes in some five million marks per year in donations and membership fees. But the society’s annual 1.1 million mark contribution to the operating costs makes up only a tiny part of the payments to festival director Wolfgang Wagner.
Beyond this, the society also finances the entire costs of new construction or repairs to the famous opera house. Wagner expects these will reach 12 million marks in the years ahead.
Schmidt, a banker, says that a new financial agreement is an absolute must.
“This is a very unworthy situation which the federal government has put us in,” he said, while expressing hopes that Berlin’s new minister for cultural affairs, Julian Nida-Ruemelin, will show a more conciliatory approach than his predecessor, Michael Naumann.
Wolfgang Wagner’s total budget this year is 22.7 million marks. More than 60 per cent of this is covered by ticket revenues.
“The federal government is covering only 12 per cent of the total budget of the festival, while for other cultural events it is often enough coming up with 84 to 92 per cent,” Wolfgang Wagner said.
After next year’s sponsored production of “Tannhaeuser”, Wagner will face having to finance the four other new productions planned up till 2006 exclusively from the festival’s own resources.
“Planning certainty is absolutely essential,” Wagner said.
