Wolfgang Wagner

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Wolfgang Wagner

Wolfgang Wagner (born 30 August 1919) is the director (Festspielleiter) of the Bayreuth Festival, a position he assumed alongside his brother Wieland in 1951. It was announced on 29 April 2008 that he will step down on 31 August 2008 when this year's festival has finished.^[1]

1 Biography
2 Career
3 References
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Biography

Wolfgang is the son of Siegfried Wagner, the grandson of Richard Wagner, and the great-grandson of Franz Liszt. He married twice, to Ellen Drexel and Gudrun Mack. Gudrun died in November 2007.^[2] He has three children: Eva, born 1945, Gottfried, born 1947 and Katharina, born 1978.^[3] He is reportedly estranged from both Eva (over control of the Bayreuth Festival^[4]) and Gottfried (over the family's connection with Adolf Hitler, a friend of Wolfgang's mother Winifred^[5]).

[edit] Career

Wolfgang worked with his older brother Wieland Wagner on the resurrection, in 1951, of the Bayreuth Festival following Germany's collapse after the Second World War. The festival has run on an annual basis since then. On Wieland's death in 1966, Wolfgang became the sole director of the festival. Under his directorship, the famous Bayreuth Festspielhaus has undergone extensive renovations.

Both brothers contributed productions to the Bayreuth Festival, but Wolfgang has not enjoyed the same critical reception as Wieland did. Like his brother, Wolfgang has favoured modern, minimalist stagings of his grandfather's works in his productions. As director of the festival, Wolfgang has commissioned work from many guest producers, including innovative and controversial stagings such as the 1976 production of the Ring Cycle by Patrice Chéreau. He has however, confined the stagings at the festival to the last ten operas by his grandfather that make up the Bayreuth canon as established under the direction of his grandmother Cosima Wagner.

Wagner has attracted some criticism for what is seen as his autocratic sway over the Festival.^[4] Nonetheless, he has helped make the Bayreuth one of the most popular destinations in the world of opera. There is a ten-year waiting list for tickets.^[6]

In 1994, he invited Werner Herzog (who had staged Lohengrin at Bayreuth in 1987) to make a documentary about the festival, which was released under the title Die Verwandlung der Welt in Musik (The Transformation of the World into Music).