Wolfgang Wagner (1919-2010)
Wolfgang Wagner (30 August 1919 - 21 March 2010) devoted his whole life to the Bayreuth Festival and the works of his grandfather Richard Wagner. He was the son of Siegfried Wagner, and was best known as the leader the Bayreuth Festival, first together with his brother Wieland Wagner from 1951 to 1966 and then alone until he retired in 2008 and his daughter Katharina Wagner took over with Eva Wagner-Pasquier.
Wolfgang Wagner's merits are for his administration of the Festival, not for his stagings. He has invited directors like Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, Patrice Chéreau, Harry Kupfer, who all have created productions that are now classics. Besides many artists have become world stars at Bayreuth: Heinz Zednik, Waltraud Meier, Graham Clark, Anne Evans, Simon Estes, Lisbeth Balslev and many more.
Numerous classic recordings and video/DVDs have been made at Bayreuth during Wagner's reign: The Chéreau/Boulez Ring, Heiner Müllers Tristan und Isolde, Harry Kupfer's Holländer etc.
Wolfgang Wagner's daughter Katharina Wagner has been running the Festival in cooperation with her half sister Eva Wagner-Pasquier since 2008.
Wolfgang Wagner's son from his first marriage, Gottfried Wagner, has published a book, Twilight of the Wagners: The Unveiling of a Family's Legacy (Wer nicht mit dem Wolf heult), where he criticized his father for closing his eyes for the morally ambivalent content in Richard Wagner's works and the Festival's ties to Hitler and the Nazi movement.
Wolfgang Wagner: Obituaries
- The Guardian
- BBC
- The New York Times
- The New Yorker
- Bloomberg
- The Economist
- Süddeutsche Zeitung
- Die Zeit
- Deutsche Welle
- Der Spiegel
- Bayerische Rundfunk
- Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
Said about Wolfgang Wagner
Somehow, Wolfgang has not merely survived from then until now. He has
also succeeded in the terms that matter most to him. He has kept Bayreuth
and its unique, visionary theatre in the forefront of European artistic
life, ensured its funding and stability, maintained its generally high
musical standards and continued to deliver an annual Wagner festival that
could sell out many times over. He has done it, moreover, without relinquishing
the Wagner family's control and often by taking the unexpectedly daring
artistic option - notably in the centenary Marx and Shaw influenced Ring
directed by Patrice Chéreau in 1976 and now again this year, in
a truly remarkable new production of Parsifal by the Norwegian director
Stefan Herheim.
Martin Kettle, The Guardian, Saturday August
2 2008
Wolfgang Wagner interview (in Norwegian)
Links
Patrice
Chéreau on Wolfgang Wagner (German)
Wolfgang
Wagners letzte Festspielzeit geht zu Ende (Gert-Dieter Meier)
Wolfgang
Wagner leaving Bayreuth after 57 years (Associated Press)
Ende
einer Ewigkeit (Der Tagesspiegel)
Das unterschätzte fränkische Genie (Süddeutschen Zeitung)
About Wolfgang Wagner on Wikipedia