Wolfgang Wagner
Encyclopedia
Wolfgang Wagner 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 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
, the grandson of Richard Wagner
, and the great-grandson of Franz Liszt
.
(née Williams-Klindworth), was English. He was born at Wahnfried
, the Wagner family home in Bayreuth in Bavaria
. In addition to his elder brother Wieland (1917–66), he had an elder sister Friedelind Wagner (1918–1991), and a younger sister Verena Wagner
(Verena Lafferenz, born 1920).
During the 1920s Winifred Wagner was an admirer, supporter and friend of the Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler
, who became a regular visitor to Bayreuth. 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
but never joined the Nazi Party. He joined the German Army in 1939. During the Polish campaign 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 and Gudrun Mack. Mack died in November 2007. He has three children: Eva
, born 1945, Gottfried
, born 1947 and Katharina
, born 1978. He was reportedly estranged from the children born of his first marriage; both with his son Gottfried over the family's connection with Hitler; and with his daughter Eva over control of the Bayreuth Festival. Eva was eventually named as his successor as the director of the Bayreuth Festival in conjunction with his preferred candidate, his daughter Katharina, after the two women reached an agreement following the death of his second wife who was Katharina's mother.
's collapse after the Second World War. 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
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 by Patrice Chéreau
. However, he confined the stagings at the festival to the last ten operas by his grandfather that make up the Bayreuth canon
established under the direction of his grandmother Cosima Wagner
.
Wolfgang attracted some criticism for what was seen as his autocratic sway over the Festival, much of which comes from within the Wagner family itself. Wieland's daughters, Daphne and Nike Wagner
, have accused their uncle of ill-treating their branch of the family, saying that he drove them and their mother out of 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
, while Wolfgang's own son, Gottfried, accuses him of having tried to suppress all information about the Wagner grandchildren's connection with the Nazis.
Nonetheless, he helped make the Bayreuth one of the most popular destinations in the world of opera
. There was a ten-year waiting list for tickets. 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).
Germans
The Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....
opera director. He is best known as the director (Festspielleiter) of the Bayreuth Festival
Bayreuth Festival
The Bayreuth Festival is a music festival held annually in Bayreuth, Germany, at which performances of operas by the 19th century German composer Richard Wagner are presented...
, a position he initially assumed alongside his brother Wieland
Wieland Wagner
Wieland Wagner was a German opera director.- Life :Wieland was the elder of two sons of Siegfried and Winifred Wagner and grandson of composer Richard Wagner....
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 Wagner
Siegfried Wagner 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:...
, the grandson of Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
, and the great-grandson of Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...
.
Biography
His mother, Winifred WagnerWinifred Wagner
Winifred Wagner was an English woman married to Siegfried Wagner, Richard Wagner's son. She was the effective head of the Wagner family from 1930 to 1945, and a close friend of German dictator Adolf Hitler....
(née Williams-Klindworth), was English. He was born at Wahnfried
Wahnfried
Wahnfried may refer to:*Wahnfried, Richard Wagner's villa in Bayreuth*Richard Wahnfried , the long-time alias for German composer and musician Klaus Schulze...
, the Wagner family home in Bayreuth in Bavaria
Bavaria
Bavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...
. In addition to his elder brother Wieland (1917–66), he had an elder sister Friedelind Wagner (1918–1991), and a younger sister Verena Wagner
Verena Wagner
Verena Wagner is the fourth child and youngest daughter of Winifred and Siegfried Wagner and the granddaughter of German composer Richard Wagner....
(Verena Lafferenz, born 1920).
During the 1920s Winifred Wagner was an admirer, supporter and friend of the Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
, who became a regular visitor to Bayreuth. 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
Hitler Youth
The Hitler Youth was a paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party. It existed from 1922 to 1945. The HJ was the second oldest paramilitary Nazi group, founded one year after its adult counterpart, the Sturmabteilung...
but never joined the Nazi Party. He joined the German Army in 1939. During the Polish campaign 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 and Gudrun Mack. Mack died in November 2007. He has three children: Eva
Eva Wagner-Pasquier
Eva Wagner-Pasquier is a German opera manager. She is the daughter of Wolfgang Wagner and Ellen Drexel...
, born 1945, Gottfried
Gottfried Wagner
Gottfried Wagner is a multimedia director and publicist.Gottfried Wagner is the son of Wolfgang Wagner and a great-grandchild of Richard Wagner. His PhD is about Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht. He has concentrated on German culture and politics, as well as Jewish history of the 19th and 20th...
, born 1947 and Katharina
Katharina Wagner
Katharina Wagner is a German opera stage-director and co-director of the Bayreuth Festival. She is the daughter of Wolfgang Wagner, great-granddaughter of Richard Wagner and great-great granddaughter of Hungarian composer Ferenc Liszt.She notably staged Der fliegende Holländer in Würzburg and...
, born 1978. He was reportedly estranged from the children born of his first marriage; both with his son Gottfried over the family's connection with Hitler; and with his daughter Eva over control of the Bayreuth Festival. Eva was eventually named as his successor as the director of the Bayreuth Festival in conjunction with his preferred candidate, his daughter 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 GermanyGermany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
's collapse after the Second World War. 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
Bayreuth Festspielhaus
The or Bayreuth Festival Theatre is an opera house north of Bayreuth, Germany, dedicated solely to the performance of operas by the 19th-century German composer Richard Wagner...
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 by Patrice Chéreau
Patrice Chéreau
Patrice Chéreau is a French opera and theatre director, filmmaker, actor, and producer.-Biography:Patrice Chéreau was born in Lézigné, Maine-et-Loire, and went to school in Paris. At a young age he became well-known to Parisian critics as director, actor, and stage manager of his high-school theatre...
. However, he confined the stagings at the festival to the last ten operas by his grandfather that make up the Bayreuth canon
Bayreuth canon
The Bayreuth canon consists of those operas by the German composer Richard Wagner which 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 Bavarian town of Bayreuth, and has continued under the...
established under the direction of his grandmother Cosima Wagner
Cosima Wagner
Cosima Francesca Gaetana Wagner, née de Flavigny, from 1844 known as Cosima Liszt; was the daughter of Hungarian composer Franz Liszt...
.
Wolfgang attracted some criticism for what was seen as his autocratic sway over the Festival, much of which comes from within the Wagner family itself. Wieland's daughters, Daphne and Nike Wagner
Nike Wagner
Nike Wagner is the director of an arts festival held annually at Weimar, Germany , and a noteworthy collaborator in the Bayreuth Festival, founded in 1876 by Richard Wagner, her paternal great-grandfather...
, have accused their uncle of ill-treating their branch of the family, saying that he drove them and their mother out of the family home
Wahnfried
Wahnfried may refer to:*Wahnfried, Richard Wagner's villa in Bayreuth*Richard Wahnfried , the long-time alias for German composer and musician Klaus Schulze...
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 concentration camp
Konzentrationslager Flossenbürg was a Nazi concentration camp built in May 1938 by the Schutzstaffel Economic-Administrative Main Office at Flossenbürg, in the Oberpfalz region of Bavaria, Germany, near the border with Czechoslovakia. Until its liberation in April 1945, more than 96,000 prisoners...
, while Wolfgang's own son, Gottfried, accuses him of having tried to suppress all information about the Wagner grandchildren's connection with the Nazis.
Nonetheless, he helped make the Bayreuth one of the most popular destinations in the world of opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
. There was a ten-year waiting list for tickets. In 1994, he invited Werner Herzog
Werner Herzog
Werner Herzog Stipetić , known as Werner Herzog, is a German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor, and opera director.He is often considered as one of the greatest figures of the New German Cinema, along with Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Margarethe von Trotta, Volker Schlöndorff, Werner...
(who had staged Lohengrin
Lohengrin (opera)
Lohengrin is a romantic opera in three acts composed and written by Richard Wagner, first performed in 1850. The story of the eponymous character is taken from medieval German romance, notably the Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach and its sequel, Lohengrin, written by a different author, itself...
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).
Further reading
- Carr, JonathanJonathan Carr (writer)Jonathan Carr was a British journalist and author, who lived and worked primarily in Germany.He was born in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire....
: The Wagner Clan: The Saga of Germany's Most Illustrious and Infamous Family. Atlantic Monthly Press, 2007. ISBN 0871139758
External links
- Die Verwandlung der Welt in Musik on IMDB
- Wolfgang Wagner Photo Gallery
- Wolfgang Wagner - Daily Telegraph obituary
- Wolfgang Wagner obituary - Guardian obituary
- Wolfgang Wagner: director of the Bayreuth Festival Opera Times obituary