Fight of the Valkyries

Aficionados of the 100-year-old festival in southern Germany sometimes wait up to 10 years for the opportunity to buy one of the 2,000 tickets, forking out up to 208 euros (£165) for the privilege.

Next month, the Bayreuth Festival will announce its first new director in 57 years – and the battle between the glamorous young Katharina Wagner and two elderly relatives for the coveted post has revealed ambition, treachery and grief worthy of the juiciest opera.  At the end of August, the Wagner family, after a bitter and drawn-out internecine struggle, will finally come to a decision as to which of them will succeed the composer's ageing grandson and run the festival in the future.

Far more important things will happen elsewhere over the next month. But within the worldwide community of Wagnerians, the devoted fans of the Bayreuth master, few issues generate such fascination as the Bayreuth succession. For Wolfgang Wagner, who has run the festival since 1951, has resigned his office, effective 31 August. Aged 88, and in failing health, he has at last agreed that the director's job should be handed over to a new generation.

But to whom exactly? Opera-fan websites devote page after page to a microscopic, bitchy examination of the prospects of the three favourites: a glamorous young blonde and two elderly relatives. While all three are members of the Wagner family, no two share an identical set of parents – and each must carry the baggage of her family's chequered history.

Until now, a member of the Wagner dynasty – either a direct descendant or, in two cases, a Wagner widow – has run Bayreuth. Some commentators argue that the whole enterprise should be handed to an administration separate from the Wagners. But for reasons largely based on a desire to keep a direct connection with the resonant name of the composer, Bayreuth will almost certainly continue to be family-run. Given until the close of this year's event to come up with a solution, the Wagner clan, riven as it is with long-standing feuds, is in the final stages of defining the way ahead.