Music 
Change is in the air at the annual Bayreuth festival in Germany – and for the first time in half a century, the Wagner family is managing it harmoniously. Making their debut in front of the world’s cultural press last weekend, the new joint festival directors, Katharina Wagner and Eva Wagner-Pasquier, appeared relaxed together. After two generations of family feuding, the half-sisters have signalled a fresh start.
That marks a change in style from their father, Wolfgang Wagner, whose long reign as festival director, until his retirement last year, was increasingly marked by authoritarianism and artistic stagnation. But do Katharina, 31, and Eva, 64, have the vision to reclaim Bayreuth’s position in the vanguard of Wagner interpretation?
For the German cultural establishment, as much as the local and national funding bodies that bankroll Bayreuth, the succession debate was more than a beauty contest between members of the Wagner family. It was about the need to reinterpret Richard Wagner’s ideals in a 21st-century context. His injunction “Kinder, schafft Neues” (Children, make something new) is often quoted, but Katharina and Eva have shown little enthusiasm for discussing its relevance today.
Some commentators, led by Nike Wagner (another of the composer’s great-granddaughters), say the festival has become lazy: buoyed by the overwhelming demand for tickets, it has turned itself into a well-oiled commercial machine. Nike wants the festival to range wider than the 10 Wagner operas canonised by Cosima, the composer’s widow, and advocates a programme embracing Wagner’s unsuccessful early works, composers that influenced him and contemporary works that draw on his spirit.
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| Half-sisters and co-directors Katharina (left) and Eva |
That may be a step too far for most Bayreuth-watchers, but few deny the need for modernisation. The joint directorship is a compromise. The Richard Wagner Foundation, dominated by public funding bodies, had no intention of handing one of Germany’s cultural jewels to someone as inexperienced as Katharina – especially after her over-the-top 2007 production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, revived at this year’s festival, which includes full-frontal nudity and portraits of German cultural icons brandishing plastic phalluses. Yet although Eva, formerly a casting director for leading opera houses, brings maturity, international experience and the goodwill of Bavaria’s cultural bigwigs, she has no independent artistic profile.
Katharina is Eva’s polar opposite. She is young, media-savvy, ambitious, super-confident, with an apparent imperviousness to criticism: taking a solo bow to a wall of boos after Meistersinger last Sunday, she beamed. Katharina enjoys striking provocative poses and is not slow to trade on the Wagner name. She has already raised the festival’s internet profile and launched marketing initiatives that include a children’s version of Der fliegende Holländer and a series of big-screen relays from the festival theatre. She has also pledged to open up the Wagner family’s long-secret wartime archives, detailing contacts with Hitler.
Katharina and Eva’s differences in age and personality could work to their advantage. Already they are focusing on a new generation of interpreters – notably the conductor Thomas Hengelbrock, an early music authority who promises a new edition of Tannhäuser for 2011, based on his study of Wagner’s rehearsal and piano scores from Paris and Dresden. Kiril Petrenko will conduct a new Ring for the composer’s bicentenary in 2013. Katharina will stage Tristan und Isolde in 2015, and there is talk of featuring Wagner’s early works on the festival fringe.
While none of these plans signifies a radical change of direction, they offer grounds for hope. But one change has already taken place that could have far-reaching consequences. With Wolfgang’s retirement the Wagner family’s legal title to the festival came to an end. The new joint directors have seven-year contracts and are employees of the state. This opens the way for a non-Wagner to take command of the festival theatre. It has already led to the unionisation of the workforce, who previously submitted to Wolfgang’s will, at lower-than-market rates of pay.
Like it or not, something new is being made of Wagner’s Bayreuth legacy. Whether his “children” remain in control will depend on how Katharina and Eva fare over the next six years.
