"I was very scared of some of the operas as a little girl, especially the dragon from Siegfried," Katharina Wagner says over the phone from Bayreuth's famous Festspielhaus, or Festival Theater. "Then my father took me backstage, and I saw that it was stuffed with newspaper." Wagner, you could say, has opera in her blood. The voluptuous 30-year-old blonde fräulein is a great-granddaughter of Richard Wagner, whose vast operas pushed the limits of the epic with such Teutonic masterpieces as Tristan und Isolde, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg , and the Ring cycle. "Opera is part of my life," Wagner goes on in a smoky alto voice that belies her youth.
Not surprisingly for someone who grew up in Bayreuth, home of the annual festival dedicated to her celebrated ancestor's work (which kicked off this year on July 25), Katharina is steeped in the tradition. Her father, Wolfgang Wagner, who recently announced his intention to step down from running the Bayreuth Festival after 57 years, has perhaps been grooming his youngest daughter from an early age to take over. Last year, it became very obvious that Katharina was daddy's favorite when Wolfgang, now 89, allowed her to make her directorial debut at Bayreuth with Die Meistersinger, which was widely seen as her job application.
Her subversive modern production was hardly a success: Katharina was greeted with loud booing at the curtain call. (Perhaps audiences will be gentler this year when her production is reprised). The flurry of schadenfreude that followed was perhaps fueled by the fact that Wolfgang had bypassed other Wagners who had also aspired to run the festival — namely, his niece Nike Wagner and his 63-year-old daughter from his first marriage, Eva Wagner-Pasquier — in favor of his youngest child.
But the family dynamics changed after Wolfgang's strong-willed wife, Gudrun, died, allowing for a truce between Katharina and her half-sister, Eva. "After the death of my mother last year, the relationship with my sister has developed," Katharina says. "Half a year ago, it was very different. But now we are very close and talk to each other, which really was impossible before."
Given this breakthrough (or alliance of convenience), Katharina and Eva have submitted a proposal to the Stiftungsrat, the festival's governing council, to run the Bayreuth Festspiele together. It's a surprising solution, but one favored by the aging Wolfgang, who will finally hand over the reins next year.
But the plan is bitterly contested by Nike Wagner, the 63-year-old daughter of Wolfgang's late brother, Wieland, a creative force in Bayreuth until his death in 1966. Like Eva, Nike is an experienced festival manager who has her own strong ideas about how to run Bayreuth. She says this latest proposal is a cynical move. "Eva is a transitional figure helping young Katharina — who does not inspire confidence — to come to power," she says. "Eva alone was not wanted by her father. There is a generation gap, and both are ambitious."
Of course, all of this feuding is par for the course for the Wagner clan. They've been nicknamed Germany's most famous family, and not just because of the music. From Richard Wagner's anti-Semitism to the family's association with the Nazis (and eventually with Hitler himself, thanks to Katharina's granny, Winifred), their long-running saga has proved both fascinating and very often distressing. The Bayreuth Festival may be a shrine for opera lovers, but it's also a potent symbol of a nation's glory and disgrace.
The latest internecine battle between Wagner factions only distracts from an important fact: The 132-year-old Bayreuth Festival is no longer what it was, and the best productions of Wagner now happen elsewhere at, say, Glyndebourne or the Metropolitan Opera. Great Wagnerian voices like soprano Deborah Voigt, tenor Ben Heppner, or bass René Pape haven't been seen or heard in the Festspielhaus, the so-called House that Richard Built, in years — further evidence of artistic neglect. Luring big-name talent back to Bayreuth is something that Katharina and Eva say is at the top of their to-do list.
For her part, Katharina — nicknamed the Blonde Crown Princess by the German tabloid Bild — won't be drawn into talking about the feud, although in the past she has said that Nike and Eva were too old to "develop their own profile." But that catty remark is so last year. "I think it's a unique festival," she now says matter-of-factly, steering away from controversy. "It should be led by one of the Wagners, as long as they have the experience. It's the best combination for the festival — experience plus the name." Come December, when the Stiftungsrat announces the long-awaited decision, she and her half-sister will almost certainly get the nod to keep the festival in the family.
