Prof. Katharina Wagner

Prof. Katharina Wagner, Richard Wagner’s great-granddaughter, has been artistic director of the Bayreuth Festival, along with her half-sister Eva Wagner-Pasquier, since 1st September 2008. Born in Bayreuth in 1978, Katharina Wagner studied theatre arts at the Free University Berlin und today lives in Bayreuth and Berlin. Alongside her studies she was director’s assistant for many opera productions, e.g. for Keith Warner and for Harry Kupfer at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden and the New National Theatre Tokio. Her own productions include ”The Flying Dutchman” in Würzburg [2002], ”Lohengrin” in Budapest [2004] and ”Der Waffenschmied” at the Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz Munich [2005]. Katharina Wagner gave her Berlin debut in 2006 with her production of Giacomo Puccini’s ”Il Trittico”. After working at the Bayreuth Festival from 1996 as director’s assistant and in the festival administration, the young director gave her directing debut on the ”green hill” in the summer of 2007 with ”Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg”. This much-talked about production was watched by 40,000 people at the Bayreuth Festival’s first ever Public Viewing in 2008, during the Siemens Festival Night on the Bayreuth Festival Square, and was released on DVD for the first time in the Festival’s history as a live recording including all audience reactions. Productions of ”Rienzi” at the Bremen Theatre (2008), ”Tannhäuser” in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (2009) and Puccini’s ”Madama Butterfly” at the Staatstheater Mainz (2010) followed. Katharina Wagner was appointed Honorary Professor in the opera directing department of the Academy of Music Hanns Eisler Berlin from the winter semester 2010/11.