Offstage Bickering Steals Show at Bayreuth

This year's Bayreuth Festival continues to be upstaged by negative comments from director Christoph Schlingensief. After causing a scandal prior to the opening performance, Germany's enfant terrible has now lashed out at the festival's organizers for not providing enough money for his new production of "Parsifal." In an angry exchange at the annual meeting of the financial contributors, Schlingensief accused festival director Wolfgang Wagner of knowing nothing about video. It was Schlingensief's copious use of video projection in his controversial interpretation of "Parsifal" that had been one of the reasons why he and the Wagner heir fell out so publicly in the run-up to this year's festival. In the meantime, a squabble between the director and his lead singer, tenor Endrik Wottrich, also refused to die down. The German, who sang the role of Parsifal slammed Schlingensief's staging as an "abomination."