Katharina Wagner: "Don't Cry For Me Argentina" but she won't be back anytime soon

"Don't Cry For Me Argentina"

"It won't be easy

You'll think it strange

When I try to explain how I feel

That I still need your love

After all that I've done

You won't believe me

All you will see

Is a girl you once knew

Although she's dressed up to the nines"
Andrew Lloyd Webber: Evita

It's not often - indeed never - that you would expect to find lyrics by Andrew Lloyd Webber here, but it just seemed so appropriate somehow.

After a bizarre week - reported here in no little detail - it seems that Katharina Wagner and Teatro Colon, Buenos Aires have finally parted ways. No longer will K Wagner direct the reduced Ring Cycle that she has been talking about. with no little enthusiasm, for the past two years. Pedro Pablo García Caffi and Teatro Colon have dissolved  Katharina Wagner's contract to produce their reduced Ring. It seems, according to Garcia Caffi, the theatre could not possibly meet her demands for rehearsal equipment, etc. However, both parties announced that the split was an amicable one.

Despite this, Teatro Colon's "reduced Ring" will still premiere on the 27 November but now with Argentine Valentina Carrasco, who has worked for more than ten years as a director with the Catalan theatre group Fura dels Baus, at the helm.

Katharina is of course now in the lucky position to be able to dedicate all of her time to the Bayreuth Festivals main sponsor, Audi's "50 years of culture at Audi" at their factory in Ingolstadt on November 11 this year.

Will she ever return to Argentina? Of this she has not spoken. However, we do have it from, admittedly highly unreliable sources, that she has been heard walking around Wahnfried these past few days singing:

"Don't cry for me Argentina

The truth is I never left you

All through my wild days

My mad existence

I kept my Audi

Now I'll keep my distance"