Wolfgang Wagner

Wolfgang Wagner (30 August 1919 – 21 March 2010^[1]) 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.

Biography[link]

His mother, Winifred Wagner (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).^[2]

Wagner married twice, to Ellen Drexel and Gudrun Mack. Mack died in November 2007.^[3] He has three children: Eva, born 1945, Gottfried, born 1947 and Katharina, born 1978.^[4] 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.^[5] 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.^[6]

Career[link]

Wolfgang worked with his older brother Wieland Wagner in 1951 on the resurrection of the Bayreuth Festival following Germany'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.^[7]

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,^[5] 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.^[8]

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.^[9] 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).

See also[link]

• Wagner family tree

Notes[link]

Further reading[link]

• Carr, Jonathan: The Wagner Clan: The Saga of Germany's Most Illustrious and Infamous Family. Atlantic Monthly Press, 2007. ISBN 0-87113-975-8

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Wolfgang Wagner

• 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

Wolfgang Sawallisch (German: [ˈvɔlfɡaŋ zaˈvalɪʃ]; born 26 August 1923) is a retired German conductor and pianist.

Biography[link]

Sawallisch was born in Munich, and studied composition and pianoforte there privately: at the conclusion of the war, in 1946 he continued his studies at the Munich High School for Music and passed his final examination for conducting.^[1] He began his career at the opera house in Augsburg in 1947.^[2] There he became first coach and later principal conductor: in 1952–53 he was personal assistant to Igor Markevitch at the International Summer Academy Mozarteum, Salzburg.^[1]

When he debuted at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus conducting Tristan und Isolde in 1957, he was the youngest conductor ever to appear there.

From 1960 to 1970 he was Principal Conductor of the Vienna Symphony. From 1971 to 1992, Sawallisch was Music Director of the Bavarian State Opera, and for several years from 1983, concurrently was the general manager of the company.

From 1993 to 2003 he was Music Director of the Philadelphia Orchestra, and is currently its Conductor Laureate. He is also Honorary Conductor Laureate of the NHK Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo. He was the recipient of a Suntory Music Award in 1993.

After his tenure with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Sawallisch returned for guest-conducting appearances in Philadelphia and at Carnegie Hall.^[3] However, ill health related to orthostatic hypotension prevented Sawallisch from conducting in subsequent years.^[4] In an article from The Philadelphia Inquirer of 27 August 2006, Sawallisch himself stated his retirement from the concert podium:

"It can happen without announcement that my blood pressure is too low. This instability gives me the necessity to finish my career after 57 years of concert and opera conducting."^[5]

Sawallisch and his wife Mechthild were married for 46 years until her death in 1998.^[6] They had a son, Jörg. Sawallisch is an honorary member of The Robert Schumann Society. In 2003, Sawallisch helped to establish a music school in Grassau, Bavaria, naming the school the Wolfgang Sawallisch Stiftung (Wolfgang Sawallisch Foundation).

Prominent interpretations[link]

Sawallisch has been acclaimed as an interpreter of the music of Richard Strauss.^[7][8][9] As a pianist, he has accompanied a number of prominent singers in lieder, including Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Dame Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Dame Margaret Price. He has also been acclaimed for his interpretations of the symphonies of Anton Bruckner.^[10]

Sawallisch has also recorded, as piano accompanist, Franz Schubert's Winterreise and Robert Schumann's Liederkreis and other songs with Thomas Hampson. One of his most celebrated live concert appearances as a pianist was on 11 February 1994 in Philadelphia, when Sawallisch substituted for the Philadelphia Orchestra at an all-Wagner concert on the night that a severe snow storm prevented much of the orchestra from arriving at the Academy of Music.^[11][12][13]

Recording highlights[link]

His other recordings for EMI include highly regarded issues of Richard Strauss's Capriccio and the four symphonies of Robert Schumann with the Dresden Staatskapelle. He made a quadrophonic stereo album (probably the only one ever made) of Mozart's The Magic Flute in 1973 for EMI, starring Peter Schreier as Tamino, Walter Berry as Papageno, Edda Moser as the Queen of the Night, Anneliese Rothenberger as Pamina, and Kurt Moll as Sarastro. Other recordings (EMI, Orfeo, Phillips, and Sony) include:

• Ludwig van Beethoven's nine symphonies with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Amsterdam
• Johannes Brahms' Ein Deutsches Requiem with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Chorus
• Johannes Brahms's four symphonies with the London Philharmonic Orchestra
• Johannes Brahms's four symphonies with the Wiener Symphoniker
• Anton Bruckner's Symphonies 1, 4, 5, 6 & 9
• Antonín Dvořák's Requiem, and Stabat Mater, both with the Czech Philharmonic; Symphonies Nos. 7–9 and Cello Concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra
• Felix Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 2 with the Berlin Philharmonic and Düsseldorf Chorus
• Franz Schubert's 9 Symphonies with Staatskapelle Dresden; Sacred Choral Works with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Chorus
• Richard Strauss's Intermezzo, Elektra, Friedenstag and Die Frau ohne Schatten, Arabella with the Bavarian State Opera
• Richard Strauss's Ein Heldenleben, Symphonia domestica, and Also sprach Zarathustra with The Philadelphia Orchestra
• Richard Strauss's Horn Concertos, with Dennis Brain and the Philharmonia Orchestra
• Giuseppe Verdi's Macbeth (live recording, Salzburg Festival)
• Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Die Feen with the Bavarian State Opera; The Flying Dutchman (Bayreuth Festival and Bavarian State Orchestra, the latter filmed) and Lohengrin (Bayreuth Festival)
• Richard Wagner's Wesendonck Lieder with Marjana Lipovsek and The Philadelphia Orchestra

One of his final concert and recording projects in Philadelphia focused on the music of Robert Schumann.^[14]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Wolfgang Sawallisch at Allmusic
• Wolfgang Sawallisch at The Remington Site
• Wolfgang Sawallisch Foundation
• František Sláma (musician) Archive. More on the history of the Czech Philharmonic between the 1940s and the 1980s: Conductors