[From today's Frankfurter Allgemeiner Zeitung. See http://www.faz.com/ for
the rest of the story.]

   The Family Feud
   By Eleonore Buning

   BAYREUTH.  The decision has been made and a solution is as far off
   as ever.  It is all very much in the notorious Bayreuth tradition of
   running in place.  The 55-year-old Eva Wagner-Pasquier is coming as
   soon as possible.  By 2002, at the latest, she will be taking over
   as director of the Bayreuth Festival, the festival's board of trustees
   explained this week.

   Yet the current director, 81-year-old Wolfgang Wagner, is staying
   on for as long as possible.  He thinks as little of the artistic
   qualifications of the disowned daughter from his first marriage as
   she does of his.  In the final days of March, as the thunderclouds
   began to billow ever more threateningly above Bayreuth and the truest
   of the true betrayed him so despicably -- even director Jurgen Flimm,
   that seasoned Bayreuther, hastily trimmed his sails to the new wind
   -- there were no dispirited Teutonic cries of farewell.

   No, the supercool Wagner the Elder merely updated his homepage
   (www.bayreuther-festspiele.com), booked a brief trip to the Korean
   "Rhinegold" and dispatched his attorney, Wieland Henker, to the board
   meeting that was supposed to point a gun at his head and tell him to
   depart once and for all.

Janos Gereben/SF, CA
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