“It can’t be helped: one must first become a Wagnerian.” In this pithy, knowing phrase, the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche summed up the immense influence that the composer Richard Wagner exerted not ...

Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music. By Alex Ross.Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 784 pages; $40. Fourth Estate; £30. HITLER CASTS as long a shadow over Richard Wagner as Wagner casts over ...

In Germany, every crop-haired infant Siegfried, every pig-tailed little Brünnhilde counts Richard Wagner one of Nazidom’s special heroes. Composer Wagner not only glorified pagan German gods and ...

To France’s Claude Debussy, Germany’s Richard Wagner was “that old poisoner” of the pure wells of music. In the 1890’s, fuming at the “grandiloquent hysteria” of the Wagnerian heroes—and calling his ...

You cannot escape Richard Wagner. If this review has reached you, anywhere in the world and by whatever means, you have already had your life affected in some way by a 19th-century megalomaniacal ...

Richard Wagner was, and still is today, arguably the most controversial figure in classical music. A self-appointed deity and hyperdriven genius, Wagner is often considered the ultimate megalomaniac.

A survey at Oper Leipzig provides an opportunity to reassess the youthful efforts that have been excluded from the composer’s canon. By Joshua Barone LEIPZIG, Germany — How quickly Richard Wagner ...

Better than: Whatever one oblivious patron's watch beeped 20 consecutive times to remind him or her to do. Watches are like small children and dates who snore. Can't shut 'em up? Don't bring 'em to ...

Marking the 200th anniversary of the controversial composer's birth, conductor Marin Alsop and friends rethink Wagner in a series of multimedia... Extreme Drama: The Life And Music Of Richard Wagner ...