Bayreuth succession struggle and Gerard Mortier’s bid

As reported in the The New York Times on October 3, 2008, Gerard Mortier’s bid for the leadership of the Bayreuth Festival came as an unwelcome surprise to the Board of the New York City Opera. Though he protested that it “was a signal that I wanted to be rescued,…that I saw myself as drowning”, Susan L. Baker, the Board’s chairperson, observed that “sending public signals is ‘not the way we have communicated with our artistic leadership’ in the past.”