It will be the last epic battle for the Valkyries. The leadership of the Bayreuth Festival, probably the hottest seat in the operatic world, will be decided on Monday, ending a long, simmering feud in the turbulent clan of the composer Richard Wagner.

Wolfgang Wagner, 89, the director of the festival and grandson of Adolf Hitler's favourite composer, stepped down this week and made it plain that he wanted his daughter Katharina, 30, to succeed him.

Ever since Richard Wagner began the festivals that celebrate his operas - above all, the Ring cycle - the family has run the place. Wolfgang has ruled over Bayreuth for 42 years, so his grudging surrender of power is a watershed in classical music.

But Katharina faces a rival, her cousin Nike Wagner. They have been jostling for the post for almost a decade and the contest centres on the question: how far can you go in opening up Richard Wagner's music to the public? Can, or should you, make Wagner cool? It is an issue that is at the very heart of German culture: many of the country's intellectuals still seem to believe that the essence of German-ness can be understood only by an elite.

Times Archive, 1933: The Wagner Festival

Herr Hitler was given a rousing welcome by Nazi supporters

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The problem is that Katharina, though energetic and engaging, is not regarded as a great musical talent. She has professed admiration for the German equivalent of Pop Idol and some of her stagings so far suggest a taste for MTV video clips. With her revealing dresses, cascading blonde hair and candid manner - she has admitted having an affair with a pilot recently - she is more Baywatch than Bayreuth. Her festival debut, a production of Meistersinger, has a chorus line of composers prancing around with strapped-on penises. To dull the criticism, she has teamed up with her half-sister, Eva Pasquier-Wagner, an experienced operatic manager, and they have promised to make Wagner fun.

“I want to stage a Wagner opera with children's participation every year,” Katharina told Bild newspaper. “Everybody says that Wagner's works are heavy-going but we want to show that this is all about stories with dragons, heroes and magic powers.

“The other thing I want to do is to start a massive discussion about Bayreuth's past. Why did Hitler love Wagner operas? How come the Nazis had such an influence?”

All of this may prove to be a bit brash for the Foundation, which makes the final decision. Wagner is regarded as a national cultural treasure and members of the federal and Bavarian governments dominate the board.

In the other corner stands Nike Wagner, 63, a tart-tongued and intellectual musicologist who runs the Weimar Festival.

She has teamed up with Gerard Mortier, an inspired organiser of the Salzburg Festival. Nike denies that the contest against Katharina pits her traditionalist views against a moderniser. “We think Wagner was a composer of the future and we will always respect this spirit.”

Her team proposes a second Wagner Festival, to be held in late spring, which would mix his music with other composers. She is also intent on looking at Wagner's appeal to the Nazis. But her main goal, she says, is to shed light on the music itself. If she wins the prize, however, Wolfgang may rescind his decision to step down. And he was given the job for life.

Wolfgang and his brother, Wieland, were put in charge of Bayreuth when it reopened after the war. Wieland, who died in 1966, was seen as the true creative genius, Wolfgang as a plodder. Nike, Wieland's daughter, cannot restrain her contempt for him. He was, she said: “The shadow attached to Wieland's heels, the demon who sucked the blood from his veins in the full light of day, the sprite he had crushed a hundred times but who always returned to his feet.”

Feuds, curses, expulsions, weak fathers and strong women - it could almost be a Wagner opera. Only the spears are missing.

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