Bayreuth festival Ha, ha, ha Apr 25th 2002 / The Economist [As usual, no byline] At 82 Wolfgang Wagner is not yet ready for Valhalla If you should visit the Bayreuth festival theatre, you may be startled by a spectral guffaw echoing in that charmless but acoustically exquisite pile. It is the sound of Wolfgang Wagner, the founder's grandson and for more than half a century director of the festival, enjoying the last laugh. Those who have fought to follow the near-interminable struggle for control of the festival among the pugnacious descendants of the master (as some zealots still call Richard Wagner) may gape to learn that Wolfgang is still able to laugh at all. The last few years have brought the white-maned, short-tempered boss all manner of troubles: rows with Placido Domingo and Waltraud Meier, two old Bayreuth favourites; fortissimo boos for a new "Ring" production; and the death of a key conductor, Giuseppe Sinopoli, between seasons. And Wolfgang himself faced a crescendo of complaints, even from once-loyal allies, that he was past it and should go. In early 1999 Wolfgang did signal that the hunt for a successor should begin, believing (though he never said so directly) that his wife Gudrun, now 57, would get the job. To his chagrin the 24-member board of the Richard Wagner Foundation instead named Eva Wagner-Pasquier, Wolfgang's estranged daughter by his first marriage. Game and set, it seemed, to Eva. But Wolfgang comes into his own with his back to the wall, where it has often been. He it was who had to go to war while his elder brother Wieland stayed home on orders of Adolf Hitler, a Bayreuth fan devoted to the children's English-born mother, Winifred; he who did most of the organisational donkey work when the festival re-started in 1951. His productions were often (usually rightly) judged inferior to his brother's. Yet when Wieland died in 1966, Wolfgang grasped all the power he had hitherto shared and cannily secured a contract for life. Wolfgang, in short, cannot be booted out unless proved guilty of grave misconduct. True, commercial success is far from everything and there is plenty of scope for debate about how Bayreuth's facilities and repertoire (which excludes Wagner's early works) might be developed. But even Wolfgang's foes can't deny that, year in year out, the festival is swamped by half a million applications for 50,000 tickets. In the end, Eva decided to concentrate on her work in helping to run the Aix-en-Provence festival. Others contenders, such as Wieland's fiery daughter Nike, who once perspicaciously called the family "a selfish, pretentious mass with prominent noses and thrusting chins", remain helplessly in waiting. So no change at Bayreuth? Indeed there is - but not everyone has yet realised how much. Even Wolfgang knows he will not live for ever, and that the festival would be plunged into crisis if a smooth power transition were not guaranteed. So he began looking for a hero seemingly as mythical as Siegfried; a proven opera manager who knows the Wagner canon backwards and who (this is the tough part) gets on not only with all branches of the Wagner family, but with the politicians and lawyers who also sit on the foundation's board. Amazingly, someone fitted the bill; Klaus Schultz, 54, who has run opera houses in Aachen and Mannheim and is now boss of Munich's Staatstheater am Gartnerplatz (recently showing "Das Liebesverbot", one of those early Wagner operas Bayreuth audiences never get to see). Just before Christmas the board unanimously appointed him Wolfgang's right-hand man. Since then Mr Schultz (who stays on at Gartnerplatz) has been shuttling to and from Bayreuth, learning the ropes there as only Wolfgang knows them. Does that mean the Bayreuth sceptre is set to pass to a non-Wagner? Not really. If Wolfgang dies, becomes, as he puts it, a mummy or, improbably, retires, then Mr Schultz would take over as acting director. But acting for how long? A tip for the finale At the Wurzburg opera house's "Flying Dutchman" this autumn you will see the debut as producer of one Katharina Wagner, aged 23. She is the daughter of Wolfgang and Gudrun and happens to live in Berlin just across from the Deutsche Oper, whose chief conductor Christian Thielemann is regularly feted at Bayreuth and who will lead the "Ring" there from 2006. "We are good friends," Mr Thielemann says of Katharina - a phrase that, in this case, almost certainly means no more than it says, despite rumours that the pair are all but wed. Can it be that a troika is shaping up for Bayreuth before long, with Katharina as director, Mr Schultz as manager and, as what amounts to house conductor, good friend Mr Thielemann? There are precedents for a set-up very like that, both in the era of Cosima Wagner (Richard's widow) and in Winifred's. Eva and Nike are already in their late 50s and neither, thanks to Wolfgang, is getting any practical experience at Bayreuth. If you were sitting on the foundation's board in, say, 2006 and were faced with the succession issue, how would you decide? No wonder that old fox Wolfgang is having a good chortle. Janos Gereben/SF [log in to unmask]