Wagner feud worthy of a soap opera

Richard Wagner, the 19th-century composer, would have been proud of the battle his descendants have waged over his legacy.

Nike Wagner, left, and Gerard Mortier, right, were passed over to manage the festival by its board of directors.

BERLIN // Richard Wagner, the 19th-century composer of thundering Germanic operas loved by Adolf Hitler, would have been proud of the epic battle his descendants have waged over his legacy. His three great-granddaughters have been feuding for years to seize control of the world-famous Wagner festival in the Bavarian town of Bayreuth with rival campaigns to succeed Wagner's 89-year-old grandson Wolfgang, who managed the annual music event for 57 years until he retired in August. On Monday the festival's board, made up of state officials and members of the various warring branches of the Wagner clan, chose to anoint stepsisters Katharina Wagner, 30, and Eva Wagner-Pasquier, 63, as joint managers. Wagner's other great granddaughter Nike, 63, had also applied for the job and dismissed the appointment as "embarrassing". The Wagner family tree is so complex that few grasp it, but the catfight, as endless as a Wagner opera, has received top billing in the German media, which regard the Wagners as a kind of royal family. "You've got different family branches that have been waging war on each other for generations. You've got a heavily fought-over hereditary home and a throne that needs a successor. The British royals are nothing compared to them," wrote Die Tageszeitung in a tongue-in-cheek commentary. The Bayreuth Festival is a national institution, and the main event of the year for Germany's high society. Celebrities, industrialists and top politicians, including Angela Merkel, the chancellor, make the pilgrimage every July to the opera house Wagner opened in 1876 as an eternal monument to his work, which includes The Rhinegold, Twilight of the Gods and Tristan and Isolde. The red carpet leading up to its grand entrance is like a catwalk where dresses are admired or tut-tutted at in celebrity TV shows. The VIPs mingle with thousands of Wagner fans from around the world. Diehard Bayreuth aficionados have a purist ritual of loud cheering or booing at performances, which is understandable given that the waiting list for a ticket can be as long as 10 years. Winifred Wagner, an Englishwoman who married Wagner's son Siegfried, managed the Bayreuth Festival from 1930 until 1944 and was a close friend of the Nazi leader who came to be known as "Uncle Adolf" to her son Wolfgang, the veteran director who has now retired. His successor, Katharina Wagner, a fiery, plain-spoken woman with a Wagnerian mane of blonde hair, has said she wants to encourage new research into links between her family and the Nazis. "We want a major debate on Bayreuth's history in the coming years," Katharina said last week. "Why did Hitler love Wagner operas? How did this Nazi embrace come about? We want to investigate that with historians and members of the family." Her equally outspoken rival Nike has scoffed at that idea. "If Katharina still hasn't dealt with Bayreuth's Nazi past it may be because of her youth," she told Spiegel magazine this week. "But she still has time to study the wealth of existing literature on the subject in peace." Nike also derided a suggestion by Katharina to organise interactive Wagner operas for children. "I think 'Wagner for Children' is a terrible idea," she said. "You have to understand an opera, not crawl all over it." Katharina does not appear to be planning a major artistic overhaul but she does intend to broaden Bayreuth's elitist appeal by transmitting operas on large public viewing screens and via the internet. She has already directed several works at Bayreuth. Her co-manager Eva, Wolfgang's daughter by another marriage, has a wealth of experience in opera management and has worked for New York's Metropolitan Opera. Despite those credentials, critics said Bayreuth has been on the wane in artistic terms because of the Wagner family's insistence on managing it themselves. The statute of the Richard Wagner Foundation set up under Wolfgang states that the opera house should be run by Wagner's descendants "unless other, better suited applicants emerge". "In an ideal world they would have looked outside the Wagner family altogether," said John Allison, editor of Britain's Opera magazine and an opera critic for the Sunday Telegraph. "Bayreuth is no longer the place where one goes for the great Wagner performances. The stage direction often leaves a lot to be desired, and they don't necessarily have the best Wagner singers. It's definitely got tired." Mr Allison said Nike Wagner, who had applied to run Bayreuth in co-operation with eminent Belgian opera director Gerard Mortier, would have been a more exciting choice. "I think Nike was the one with the really interesting ideas. She's the one in the family with the real brains," he said. Katharina's appointment had never been in much doubt. Wolfgang, who had a lifelong contract to manage Bayreuth, is reported to have only agreed to retire on condition that Katharina succeed him. In 2001 the festival's board had tried to force him to quit by naming Eva as his successor, but Wolfgang refused. Then in November his second wife, Gudrun, died. She was considered by many to be the driving force behind the festival's management, and Wolfgang agreed in April to step down at the end of the 2008 season. Critics are now drawing some hope from the fact that Katharina's and Eva's contracts will be limited, reportedly to five or seven years. "For the first time ever it won't necessarily be a lifetime job," Mr Allison said. Whether that will herald an eventual end to the dynasty's reign in Bayreuth or a new outbreak of Wagnerian hostilities, only the Valkyries can tell. [e-mail]