2024-07-23 10:11:55
EThe main topic in which the male-dominated, #MeToo-breaks the world of classical music, which currently has female directors: liberation, female empowerment, visibility, equality. And where is it and does this live out like no other opera venue in the world? At the Bayreuth Wagner Festival on the Green Hill in Upper Franconia, you can also call it Valkyrie Rock.
Here in Bayreuth, where “his wahnen found peace” in the Villa Wahnfried a little further down the valley, Richard Wagner opened the festival hall he built in 1876, which was suitable for his own musical theater performances and for money by professionals man. But he only had two festivals left – the first one with the “Ring of the Nibelung” and with it the performances of “Siegfried” and “Götterdämmerung”. Then it broke. After all, the final stage of the Festival play “Parsifal”, which was composed entirely for this house, was staged here in 1882; Played exclusively in Bayreuth until the protection period ended at the end of 1913.
Cosima has fought in vain for an extension. Cosima Liszt, divorced from Bülow, was initially despised by bourgeois society as the adulterous wife of the great composers. She was raised on the little Saxon by a little and, as his second wife, she was only allowed to take a picture with him sitting and looking up. She then went to the position of High Lady of Bayreuth, although she did not intend for this. After the death of the master, he took over the business, the property and the festival, developed the production himself from 1886 onwards and became the guardian of the unfathomable loyalty to the work.
It was not until 1908 that he gave the estate to Siegfried, his only son who was already 39 years old at the time. The four daughters – Daniela and Blandine from his first marriage, Isolde, who was pregnant with Wagner but also known as von Bülow, and Eva – did not even notice for this. There is a patriarchy on the mountain, especially since it has become a hotbed of patriotism and right-wing thinking.
But you always have to pragmatically give women priority. Like the Valkyries who received the dead soldiers on Walstatt with many hojotoho war cries, the women of the Wagner family were often the only women for the rough work. And now also for the management of the Festival, which was ideologically superior in the chaos of German history, but always financially fluctuating.
Dynastic struggle
Siegfried Wagner is weak and gay – and therefore vulnerable to rape. In 1915, at his mother’s behest, he married the powerful English woman Winifred Williams and had four children: Wieland, Friedelind, Wolfgang and Verena. The rebellious Friedelind is then chased down the hill by her own mother (as is Wolfgang’s daughter Eva a generation later, who fights with her father’s second wife). Verena, always good and safe, was later married to the “Ocean by Joy” Nazi official Bodo Lafferentz.
And the husband also died early, so in 1930, Siegfried’s widow Winifred ascended to the throne. He had brought Uncle Wolf, better known as Adolf Hitler, into the house and maintained a relationship with him, as well as with his own artistic director, Berlin State Director Heinz Tietjen. The last war conference took place under the government of Winifred Wagner in 1944. As ideologically encrusted and politically deadly as this period was, artistically it was a revival for Bayreuth.
Der Patriarch: Richard Wagner
Quelle: pa/akg-images
The next festival in 1951 continued – even more radically – as strictly “This is where you read art” in New Bayreuth by the children of Winifred Wieland and Wolfgang. They – one attractive, the other practical, both enemies of each other – lasted until 1966, until Wieland’s death. Long, but not productive, years followed Wolfgang Wagner until 2008.
After fierce dynastic wars that made the republic of art suspicious, Wolfgang’s tribe won again – like another tandem, with his daughters, half-sisters Eva and Katharina. Eva left in 2015. Now the after-school care center is firmly in Katharina’s hands – and her contract has just been extended, at least until 2030. Of course, there are no sign of the extension of the Wagner line.
To (the) salvation of people
Four leaders in the 148 years of the festival’s history (29 of which have no actions for economic, political and pandemic reasons) and four generations in the family, that is unique. Gender equality is also unique, although we don’t plan it that way. Richard Wagner conducted Bayreuth for six years, Sommer Cosima for 23, Siegfried for 22, Winifred for 14, Wieland and Wolfgang for 57 years, with Eva and Katharina for 15 years in 2024.
That’s 85 years for men and 52 for women. In 2007, Katharina Wagner was the first and so far the only female director in the stage “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg” in Bayreuth. A “women’s ring”, originally planned for 2020, then moved to Tatjana Gürbaca, but it was canceled, but at least it was ready for a decision. In Wagner’s work, many women sacrifice themselves for the (un)salvation of men, but they are not weak fools, but rather very self-reliant, powerful and unruly creatures on stage.
And even at the beginning of the preparations for this year’s festival, a photo of a female triumvirate quickly made the rounds on the so-called social media: of the three directors Oksana Lyniv (the first woman who convened in the “mystical abyss” of Bayreuth) , the orchestra pit from 2021), Natalie Stutzmann (in the second summer) and the Wagner veteran Simone Young, who has already conducted exercises here as Barenboim’s assistant, but now receives the “Ring” regularly for the first time. In 2024, alongside Semyon Bychkov and Pablo Heras-Casado, there will be more women than men at the summit on Green Hill for the first time.
And even if none of these three will surpass Christian Thielemann’s 185 actions in 22 years in Bayreuth, the wheel of gender equality does not turn back in Upper Franconia, even if the balance is different from every festival creation. One thing is clear: the Wagner Festival is not as conservative as many people still think it is. They have always been a haven for strong women in musical theater.
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