Katharina Wagner (born 21 May 1978 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 o ...

) is a German

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 libr ...

stage director and is the director 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 ...

. She is the daughter of

Wolfgang Wagner Wolfgang Wagner (30 August 191921 March 2010) was a German opera director. He is best known as the director (Festspielleiter) of the Bayreuth Festival, a position he initially assumed alongside his brother Wieland in 1951 until the latter's d ...

and

Gudrun Wagner Gudrun Wagner (''née'' Armann; 15 June 1944 – 28 November 2007) was the second wife of Wolfgang Wagner, sole director of the Bayreuth Festival since 1967. Her behind-the-scenes influence led her to be considered virtual co-director. Biogra ...

(née Armann), great-granddaughter 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 great-great granddaughter of Hungarian composer

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 ...

. Wagner has staged ''

Der fliegende Holländer ' (''The Flying Dutchman''), WWV 63, is a German-language opera, with libretto and music by Richard Wagner. The central theme is redemption through love. Wagner conducted the premiere at the Königliches Hoftheater Dresden in 1843. Wagner cla ...

'' in Würzburg and '' Lohengrin'' in Budapest. Her directorial début at the Bayreuth Festival, staging a production of

's ''

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (; "The Master-Singers of Nuremberg"), WWV 96, is a music drama, or opera, in three acts, by Richard Wagner. It is the longest opera commonly performed, taking nearly four and a half hours, not counting two breaks between acts, and is tradit ...

'' in July 2007, was booed at its premiere, but established a following which returned to watch the production evolve as Wagner made changes in each of the five years it was on view. Wagner also took a bow after every performance, with audiences split between bravas and boos. On 1 September 2008, Katharina Wagner was named together with her half-sister

Eva Wagner-Pasquier Eva Wagner-Pasquier (born 14 April 1945, in Oberwarmensteinach) is a German opera manager. She is the daughter of Wolfgang Wagner and Ellen Drexel. On 1 September 2008, Wagner-Pasquier and her half-sister Katharina Wagner were named as join ...

as the new director of the Bayreuth Festival by the

Richard Wagner Foundation The Richard Wagner Foundation (in German Richard-Wagner-Stiftung) was formed in 1973, when, faced with overwhelming criticism and infighting amongst the descendants of Richard Wagner, the Bayreuth Festival and its assets were transferred to the newl ...

, succeeding their father Wolfgang. This followed an extended family dispute. They were chosen in preference to their cousin

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 Richa ...

and the Belgian opera director and administrator

Gerard Mortier Gerard Alfons August, Baron Mortier (25 November 1943 – 8 March 2014) was a Belgian opera director and administrator of Flemish origin. Biography Born in Ghent, the son of a baker, Mortier attended in youth the Jesuit private school Sint-Barb ...

, who had placed a late joint bid for the directorship on 24 August. In October 2010, Wagner planned to visit Israel in order to invite the Israel Chamber Orchestra to play a concert in July 2011 at the Bayreuth town hall, to end a post-1945 boycott of Wagner's music in Israel. Her visit was canceled after hostility from

Holocaust survivors Holocaust survivors are people who survived the Holocaust, defined as the persecution and attempted annihilation of the Jews by Nazi Germany and its allies before and during World War II in Europe and North Africa. There is no universally acce ...

. In 2014 it was announced that Eva would be stepping down from the co-directorship leaving, in accord with her father's will, Katharina in sole charge. In April 2020 it was announced that Katharina would have to step down from her position as director of the festival until further notice because of an unspecified long-term illness. The 81-year-old, former commercial managing director, Heinz-Dieter Sense, acted as a temporary representative for Wagner in the following months. This was the first time since Heinz Tietjen in the 1930s that a non-family member had been in charge of the festival. Katharina returned to work in September 2020.

Productions

* Der fliegende Holländer (Würzburg) * Lohengrin (Budapest) * Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (Bayreuth) * Rienzi (Bremen) * Tristan und Isolde (Bayreuth) * Lohengrin (Barcelona, 2020) Katharina's new production, and her debut in Barcelona, was cancelled because of the coronavirus pandemic lockdown in Catalonia

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wagner, Katharina Katharina German opera directors 1978 births Living people Female opera directors People from Bayreuth German people of French descent German people of Hungarian descent German people of English descent

Productions

Further reading

See also

References