Few major artists have aroused the ire and adulation of successive generations as persistently as Richard Wagner. He was the centre of controversy during his li

Though his image is tarnished today by unrepentant anti-Semitism, Richard Wagner (1813–1883) was better known in the nineteenth century for his provocative mu

(Vol 1.) Wagner's Ring is one of the greatest of all artworks of Western civilization, but what is it all about? The power and mystery of Wagner's creation was

By the early 1830s the old school of Gothic literature was exhausted. Late Romanticism, emphasising as it did the uncertainties of personality and imagination,

Wagner’s Ring addresses fundamental concerns that have faced humanity down the centuries, such as power and violence, love and death, freedom and fate. Furthe