At the Wagner Festival, criticism of the director became louder: Christian Thielemann now accuses Katharina Wagner of exaggerated political correctness. The German Minister of State for Culture insists on reforms – and indicates a historical upheaval.
Katharina Wagner next to the Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder and the Mayor of Bayreuth Thomas Ebersberger (right) at the opening of the festival at the end of July 2022.
The occasion seems trivial, but reveals much more far-reaching upheavals at the Bayreuth Richard Wagner Festival. In July, shortly before the start of this year’s season, Katharina Wagner, sole director of the festival since 2015, asked tenor Klaus Florian Vogt to change the text of his interpretation of “Lohengrin”. At the dress rehearsal, Vogt sang the final words of the title role faithfully to Richard Wagner’s libretto; they read in the original: “Behold the Duke of Brabant! / May he be your leader!» Katharina Wagner asked the singer to replace the word “leader” with “protector”.
This text change is not unusual in itself. Rather, it became established in performance practice after 1945, especially in German-speaking countries, and can even be heard on recordings. It was also practiced in this way again and again on the Green Hill in earlier productions of the play. The reasons are obvious, especially at this location: After all, the ardent Wagner supporter Adolf Hitler was a regular guest in Bayreuth between 1923 and 1940. Following the example of the Italian “Duce”, Hitler had been dubbed the “Fuhrer” in the NSDAP since 1925.
A conductor in rage
One can understand the common text change as a historical consideration. The excitement about Vogt’s alleged faux pas and Wagner’s intervention in her great-grandfather’s work quickly subsided. The whole thing would have been filed away as one of those “little scandals” that are common every summer in Bayreuth’s heated festival atmosphere. But recently Christian Thielemann, the conductor of the performance, made the process a topic again in an interview with “Welt”.
In the conversation, Thielemann talks himself into a rage, there is even talk of a “Führer scandal”. However, Thielemann does not criticize Vogt’s fidelity to the text, but rather Katharina Wagner’s intervention. “Excuse me, but where are we going?” he asks rhetorically. In that case, you could change a lot more, such as the text passage “For German land, the German sword”. The whole “Lohengrin” is “full of such places”. Once in motion, Thielemann suspects that it will soon no longer be possible to play Puccini’s “Tosca” either – because of the depiction of “attempted rape, murder and so on”.
With this, Thielemann is obviously aiming at the excesses of a political correctness, which increasingly also problematizes formulations, character constellations and themes from works of the past, as recently became clear again in the debate about “Winnetou”. Thielemann is even clearer in the interview: “When I see the meticulousness with which this is being carried out, I would expect conservative politicians to say: Now let’s make sure that the country works properly before we think about it which works of world literature could be rewritten.»
Under no circumstances should this be mixed up with the need to deal with evocative words from National Socialism in a considered manner. Incidentally, Thielemann shows this sensitivity himself in his performances, for example in the numerous “Heil!” calls, all of which he sang in a controlled manner and never shouted.
palace revolution
The failure against Katharina Wagner could have deeper reasons. The relationship between the two has been strained since Wagner did not extend Thielemann’s engagement as music director of the festival in 2019. The conductor emphasizes that there is no “grief” towards Bayreuth; His conducting of Lohengrin there also impressively underlined Thielemann’s exceptional status among the Wagner interpreters of our time. But the mixed musical level of most of the other productions this summer and the plans for the next few years, in which there seems to be no place for him, are likely to displease Thielemann.
In fact, Katharina Wagner’s casting decisions have not been clear for a long time, neither in terms of singers and conductors nor in the scenic area. The debacle of Valentin Schwarz’s new “Ring” cycle, which fell through with large parts of the public and the critics, seemed like a warning sign this summer. As a result, Katharina Wagner could have lost crucial credit elsewhere.
At the end of August, the German Minister of State for Culture, Claudia Roth, remarked that there was “really a great need for reform” in Bayreuth. And Roth, who sits on a central decision-making body as a representative of the Federal Republic of Germany, indicated that the artistic direction of the festival, which Richard Wagner founded himself in 1876, does not necessarily have to remain in the hands of the family. That would be tantamount to a palace revolution. Katharina Wagner’s contract expires in 2025.