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Wolfgang Wagner (30 August 191921 March 2010) was a German
opera director
Crossbreed is an American industrial metal band from Clearwater, Florida, United States, formed in 1996. They were signed with Artemis Records before being dropped from the label in 2003. The band released two EPs and three full-length albums b ...
. He is best known as the director (Festspielleiter) of the
Bayreuth Festival
The Bayreuth Festival (german: link=no, Bayreuther Festspiele) is a music festival held annually in Bayreuth, Germany, at which performances of operas by the 19th-century German composer Richard Wagner are presented. Wagner himself conceived ...
, a position he initially assumed alongside his brother
Wieland in 1951 until the latter's death in 1966. From then on, he assumed total control until he retired in 2008, although many of the productions which he commissioned were severely criticized in their day. He had been plagued by family conflicts and criticism for many years. He was the son of
Siegfried Wagner
Siegfried Helferich Richard Wagner (6 June 18694 August 1930) was a German composer and conductor, the son of Richard Wagner. He was an opera composer and the artistic director of the Bayreuth Festival from 1908 to 1930.
Life
Siegfried Wagner ...
, who was the son of
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most op ...
, and the great-grandson of
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt, in modern usage ''Liszt Ferenc'' . Liszt's Hungarian passport spelled his given name as "Ferencz". An orthographic reform of the Hungarian language in 1922 (which was 36 years after Liszt's death) changed the letter "cz" to simpl ...
.
Biography
His mother,
Winifred Wagner
Winifred Marjorie Wagner ( Williams; 23 June 1897 – 5 March 1980) was the English-born wife of Siegfried Wagner, the son of Richard Wagner, and ran the Bayreuth Festival after her husband's death in 1930 until the end of World War II in 19 ...
(''née'' Williams-Klindworth), was English. He was born at
Wahnfried
Wahnfried was the name given by Richard Wagner to his villa in Bayreuth. The name is a German compound of (delusion, madness) and (peace, freedom).
Financed by King Ludwig II of Bavaria, the house was constructed from 1872 to 1874 under Bayreu ...
, the Wagner family home in
Bayreuth
Bayreuth (, ; bar, Bareid) is a town in northern Bavaria, Germany, on the Red Main river in a valley between the Franconian Jura and the Fichtelgebirge Mountains. The town's roots date back to 1194. In the 21st century, it is the capital of U ...
in
Bavaria
Bavaria ( ; ), officially the Free State of Bavaria (german: Freistaat Bayern, link=no ), is a state in the south-east of Germany. With an area of , Bavaria is the largest German state by land area, comprising roughly a fifth of the total lan ...
. In addition to his elder brother Wieland (1917–66), he had an elder sister
Friedelind Wagner
Friedelind Wagner (29 March 1918 – 8 May 1991) was the elder daughter of German opera composer Siegfried Wagner and his English wife, Winifred Williams and the granddaughter of the composer Richard Wagner. She was also the great-granddaughte ...
(1918–1991), and a younger sister
Verena Wagner (1920–2019).
During the 1920s Winifred Wagner was an admirer, supporter and friend of the
Nazi
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
leader,
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...
, who became a regular visitor to Bayreuth a decade before he assumed power in Germany. Wolfgang Wagner first met Hitler in 1923, when he was four years old, and the Wagner children were encouraged to call him "Uncle Adolf" or "Uncle Wolf" (his nickname). When Hitler became Chancellor in 1933, he showered favours on the Wagner family. Wolfgang was a member of the
Hitler Youth
The Hitler Youth (german: Hitlerjugend , often abbreviated as HJ, ) was the youth organisation of the Nazi Party in Germany. Its origins date back to 1922 and it received the name ("Hitler Youth, League of German Worker Youth") in July 1926. ...
but never joined the Nazi Party. He joined the
German Army
The German Army (, "army") is the land component of the armed forces of Germany. The present-day German Army was founded in 1955 as part of the newly formed West German ''Bundeswehr'' together with the ''Marine'' (German Navy) and the ''Luftwaf ...
in 1939. During the
Polish campaign
The invasion of Poland (1 September – 6 October 1939) was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union which marked the beginning of World War II. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week afte ...
he was severely wounded in the arm, and he was discharged as medically unfit in June 1940 (Hitler visited him in the hospital).
Wagner married twice, to Ellen Drexel (1919–2002) and
Gudrun Mack (1944–2007). He has three children:
Eva
Eva or EVA may refer to:
* Eva (name), a feminine given name
Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional characters
* Eva (Dynamite Entertainment), a comic book character by Dynamite Entertainment
* Eva (''Devil May Cry''), Dante's mother in t ...
, born 1945,
Gottfried
Gottfried is a masculine German given name.
It is derived from the Old High German name , recorded since the 7th century.
The name is composed of the elements (conflated from the etyma for 'God' and 'good', and possibly further conflated with ) a ...
, born 1947 and
Katharina
Katharina is a feminine given name. It is a German form of Katherine. It may refer to:
In television and film:
*Katharina Bellowitsch, Austrian radio and TV presenter
*Katharina Mückstein, Austrian film director
*Katharina Thalbach, German actre ...
, born 1978. He was reportedly estranged from his daughter Eva over control of the Bayreuth Festival,
[ while Gottfried, who has long been publicly critical, and was banned from the family villa in 1975,][Kate Connoll]
"'Lost son' Gottfried Wagner reopens the family feud over Bayreuth"
''The Observer'', 4 April 2010 only learned of his father's death from media coverage. According to Gottfried's autobiography ''Twilight of the Wagners: The Unveiling of a Family's Legacy'' (1997, English version: 1999), his father told him in the 1950s: "Hitler cured unemployment and restored worldwide respect for the German economy. He freed our people from a moral crisis and united all decent forces. We Wagners have him to thank for the idealistic rescue of the Bayreuth festival."
Eva was eventually named as his successor as the director of the Bayreuth Festival in conjunction with his preferred candidate, her half-sister Katharina, after the two women reached an agreement following the death of his second wife who was Katharina's mother.
Career
Wolfgang worked with his older brother Wieland Wagner in 1951 on the resurrection of the Bayreuth Festival following Germany's defeat in the Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
. Since that time, the festival has run on an annual basis. On Wieland's death in 1966, Wolfgang became the sole director of the festival and, under his directorship, the famous Bayreuth Festspielhaus
The ''Bayreuth Festspielhaus'' or Bayreuth Festival Theatre (german: link=no, Bayreuther Festspielhaus, ) is an opera house north of Bayreuth, Germany, built by the 19th-century German composer Richard Wagner and dedicated solely to the performa ...
underwent extensive renovations. He stepped down on 31 August 2008 when the year's festival had finished.
Both brothers contributed productions to the Bayreuth Festival, but Wolfgang did not enjoy the same critical reception as Wieland did. Like his brother, Wolfgang favoured modern, minimalist stagings of his grandfather's works in his productions. As director of the festival, Wolfgang commissioned work from many guest producers, including innovative and controversial stagings such as the 1976 production of the Ring Cycle
(''The Ring of the Nibelung''), WWV 86, is a cycle of four German-language epic music dramas composed by Richard Wagner. The works are based loosely on characters from Germanic heroic legend, namely Norse legendary sagas and the ''Nibelung ...
by Patrice Chéreau
Patrice Chéreau (; 2 November 1944 – 7 October 2013) was a French opera and theatre director, filmmaker, actor and producer. In France he is best known for his work for the theatre, internationally for his films '' La Reine Margot'' and ...
. However, he confined the stagings at the festival to the last ten operas by his grandfather that make up the Bayreuth canon
The Bayreuth canon consists of those operas by the German composer Richard Wagner (1813–1883) that have been performed at the Bayreuth Festival. The festival, which is dedicated to the staging of these works, was founded by Wagner in 1876 in the ...
established under the direction of his grandmother Cosima Wagner
Francesca Gaetana Cosima Wagner ( née Liszt; 24 December 1837 – 1 April 1930) was the daughter of the Hungarian composer and pianist Franz Liszt and Franco-German romantic author Marie d'Agoult. She became the second wife of the German co ...
.
Wolfgang attracted some criticism for what was seen as his autocratic sway over the Festival,Tom Service
Tom Service (born 8 March 1976) is a British writer, music journalist and television and radio presenter, who has written regularly for ''The Guardian'' since 1999 and presented on BBC Radio 3 since 2001. He is a regular presenter of The Proms f ...
(20 July 2007)
"Wagner's guardian"
BBC News. much of which comes from within the Wagner family itself. Wieland's daughters, Daphne and Nike Wagner
Nike Wagner () (born 9 June 1945) is a German dramaturge, arts administrator and author. She directed the festival , and has been the director of the Beethovenfest from 2014. The daughter of Wieland Wagner, she is a great-granddaughter of Richar ...
, have accused their uncle of ill-treating their branch of the family, saying that he drove them and their mother out of Wahnfried
Wahnfried was the name given by Richard Wagner to his villa in Bayreuth. The name is a German compound of (delusion, madness) and (peace, freedom).
Financed by King Ludwig II of Bavaria, the house was constructed from 1872 to 1874 under Bayreu ...
, the family home, following their father's death and destroyed the scenery, models and correspondence with artists relating to their father's work. Wagner writer Barry Millington notes two rather inconsistent threads of criticism about Wolfgang's role in managing the presentation of the family's connection with the Nazis. Daphne accuses him of blackening her father's name by releasing information on Wieland's connection with the Bayreuth satellite of the Flossenbürg concentration camp
Flossenbürg was a Nazi concentration camp built in May 1938 by the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office. Unlike other concentration camps, it was located in a remote area, in the Fichtel Mountains of Bavaria, adjacent to the town of F ...
, while Wolfgang's own son, Gottfried, accuses him of having tried to suppress all information about the Wagner grandchildren's connection with the Nazis. Moreover, Christian Kracht
Christian Kracht (; born 29 December 1966) is a Swiss author. His books have been translated into more than 30 languages.
Personal life
Kracht was born in Saanen in the Canton of Bern, Switzerland. He attended Schule Schloss Salem in Baden-Wür ...
described "the likes of Wolfgang Wagner" as "bourgeois & enemy to Christoph Schlingensief
Christoph Maria Schlingensief (24 October 1960 – 21 August 2010) was a German theatre director, performance artist, and filmmaker. Starting as an independent underground filmmaker, Schlingensief later staged productions for theatres and festivals ...
."
Nonetheless, he helped make the Bayreuth one of the most popular destinations in the world of opera
Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a librett ...
. There was a ten-year waiting list for tickets. In 1994, he invited Werner Herzog
Werner Herzog (; born 5 September 1942) is a German film director, screenwriter, author, actor, and opera director, regarded as a pioneer of New German Cinema. His films often feature ambitious protagonists with impossible dreams, people with un ...
(who had staged ''Lohengrin
Lohengrin () is a character in Germany, German Arthurian literature. The son of Percival, Parzival (Percival), he is a knight of the Holy Grail sent in a boat pulled by swans to rescue a maiden who can never ask his identity. His story, which fi ...
'' 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'')."Addio a Wagner, nipote di Richard e direttore del Festival di Bayreuth"
Quotidiano.net, 22 March 2010
Notes
Sources
*
Further reading
*
Wagner, Nike: ''The Wagners: The Dramas of a Musical Dynasty''. Princeton University Press, 1998.
External links
*
Wolfgang Wagner– ''Daily Telegraph'' obituary
Wolfgang Wagner obituary– ''The Guardian'' obituary
Wolfgang Wagner: director of the Bayreuth Festival Opera''The Times'' obituary
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wagner, Wolfgang
1919 births
2010 deaths
German opera directors
German people of French descent
German people of Hungarian descent
German people of English descent
Opera managers
People from Bayreuth
Wolfgang
Grand Crosses with Star and Sash of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
German Army personnel of World War II
Hitler Youth members
Members of the Széchenyi Academy of Literature and Arts