New faces at Bayreuth as festival opens under Wagner’s great-granddaughters

Bayreuth opera festival opens under new directors

BAYREUTH, Germany — The annual Bayreuth opera festival opened under new management on Saturday, with composer Richard Wagner’s great-granddaughters in charge for the first time after their father ran the show for more than 50 years.

Half-sisters Katharina Wagner, 31, and Eva Wagner-Pasquier, 64, welcomed luminaries such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel — a regular pilgrim to Bayreuth — and Bavarian Governor Horst Seehofer to the Festspielhaus.

The new directors are offering innovations such as a trimmed-down version of “The Flying Dutchman” for children but, with performers booked years ahead, the main program at this year’s 98th edition of the festival focuses on familiar fare.

This year’s opening performance was “Tristan and Isolde,” staged by Christoph Marthaler, with Robert Dean Smith as Tristan and Irene Theorin as Isolde.

On Aug. 9, a “Tristan” performance will be broadcast live on the Internet and also screened live in a central Bayreuth square — moves championed by Katharina Wagner.

The new team’s innovations “constitute promising beginnings of reform, even if the new directors’ artistic signature will only be visible in the long term,” Culture Minister Bernd Neumann said this week.

“I wish both of them luck and success for the further development of this incomparable cultural event,” he said.

The new directors made a fleeting appearance Saturday at a press reception ahead of the first performance, but took no questions.

At a news conference on Wednesday, Katharina Wagner said that “it is a matter of the heart for me to bring opera to the people.”

She said she hoped to promote a “better understanding” of the works by offering opera-goers pre-performance talks by experts.

The half-sisters’ appointment last September ended a years-long battle in which their 89-year-old father, Wolfgang Wagner, long resisted efforts to dislodge him. He had led the festival since 1951, when he and his brother Wieland revived it following a World War II hiatus.

After Wieland died of cancer in 1966, Wolfgang remained as the festival’s sole director. In recent years, feelings grew that the annual event would benefit from an injection of fresh ideas.

Wolfgang finally agreed to step aside after last year’s festival; and Katharina and Eva teamed up to beat out a rival bid from their cousin, Nike Wagner.

Alongside “Tristan and Isolde,” festival-goers this year also can look forward to Katharina Wagner’s own staging of “Die Meistersinger von Nuernberg,” now in its third year; Tankred Dorst’s “Der Ring des Nibelungen;” and Stefan Herheim’s “Parsifal.” The festival runs through Aug. 28.

On the Net:

www.festspiele-bayreuth.de/english/english(underscore)156.html