In Monday’s (7/27) Times (London), Roger Boyes writes, “The two great-granddaughters of the composer Richard Wagner held their first Bayreuth Festival this weekend—and have promised to reveal the Wagner family’s link to the Nazis. They even want to tackle the question of whether their grandmother, Winifred Wagner, slept with Hitler. Eva Pasquier-Wagner, 64, and Katharina Wagner, 31, took over the festival from their ailing father, Wolfgang, and are committed to making the event, which is a high point in the classical music calendar, modern. … Wagner was Hitler’s favourite composer, but how close were the family to him? … The plan is for historians to produce a report by 2013, the 200th anniversary of Wagner’s birth. Wahnfried, the Wagner family villa, will house a permanent exhibition on the Nazi years. A display of biographies of Jewish singers and musicians who were driven out of the Third Reich’s opera houses will be held next year.”
Posted July 28, 2009
