Bayreuth Festival's Nazi past goes under the microscope

Anyone who claims the Bayreuth Festival has nothing to do with politics is seriously out of touch. Even today, Germany's political leaders can't tear themselves away from the Green Hill. 

Katharina Wagner promised when she took over the Bayreuth Festival last year that independent historians would be invited to examine the darkest of these connections, the days of National Socialism.

And sure enough, yesterday it was announced that historian and journalist Peter Siebenmorgen and Professor Wolfram Pyta of Stuttgart University will lead a project to analyse the role of the Festival and the Wagner family under Hitler's dictatorship.

Details of financing and timing have yet to be arranged, but Katharina Wagner said last year she wanted the results of any investigation to be made available before the Wagner bicentenary in 2013. Yesterday Siebenmorgen praised the willingness of the current directors to clarify the family 's Nazi past .

Comments

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It's the 3 Norns from the projected Neufels production of Götterdämmerung.

John

[Jim]

Are there going to be English and Welsh scholars involved, since that evil witch Winifred (Williams) Wagner was a main force behind Hitler being welcomed at the festival? Or do only the Germans have to continually undergo this absurd self-flagellation routine?

[Hair Man]

@John I'm going with a very low budget production of Cenerentola with the Wagner sisters being the evil stepsisters to poor Merkel, left with kein Strauß (either bouquet or ostrich depending on Google's grasp of German).

@Jim In an act of friendship in the sometimes fraught sphere of Anglo-Welsh relations I'm all for allowing full ownership of Wini-the-Boo to the Anglo side of things...