Wagner festival

The 98th Richard Wagner opera festival opened on Saturday in Bayreuth in southern Germany with a very brief appearance by the new directors Eva Wagner-Pasquier, and her half-sister, Katharina Wagner. The two women are great-granddaughters of Wagner and have decided to try to give the highly popular event an update. Newslink host Jackie Wilson spoke to Deutsche Welle's music editor Rick Fulker, who was in Bayreuth.

DW: Have the two great-granddaughters succeeded in giving the event a new polish?

Rick Fulker: Judging from the first act of Tristan, which we've just seen at the premiere, you can't say much yet because the production already existed and it's actually rather drab. The scenery is sort of a run-down luxury liner and there is very little stage action. In fact if the strike had happened as they thought, the production could have gone along without the stage work, since there is very little to see. So you can't judge on the basis of one act of one performance. In fact, this year there are no new productions, but there are some things on the side. They've revamped the Web site again, they've refreshed the podcasts, they're reinstating public viewing later in the season and, all in all, there's an effort being made to show that the two are sort of face-lifting the festival. They are especially interested in public relations. A lot of style, but the substance remains to be seen

So they're also going very high-tech. What is this going to mean for the potential audiences of the festival, because we know that demand far exceeds actual ticket availability?

That's right. In fact it's very interesting, if you go back to Richard Wagner himself, he wanted to have a festival that was open to everybody free of charge. So the idea of public viewing and streaming performances on the Internet, a selection of them, is going back to the basic Wagner idea. But yes, the festival remains exclusive. There's been a sense of myth and secrecy that has surrounded this festival for decades and the directors are now sort of de-mythifying it if you will, yet at the same time it doesn't mean there has been a decline of interest, even though many of the performances are now available worldwide.

The directors are the two great-granddaughters of the composer himself, and we know that there has been a family quarrel which has been going on for decades. They've said they want to put that to one side, is there any reflection of that to be seen in the festival as it opened Saturday?

They have announced that they are going to get together with all the family members, including some who have been banned from the festival for decades. The two sisters – basically they're half-sisters – they didn't even know each other, hardly saw each other for 30 years, after the divorce of Wolfgang Wagner. At least the two of them are making every effort to show that they are working in tandem. They are professing absolute unity in all the substantial matters.

Interviewer: Jackie Wilson
Editor: Kyle James