The greatest of operatic composers has been dead for over fifty years; today there are many more thousands than ever before to whom the immortal works of Wilhelm Richard Wagner bring their most profound musical enjoyment. But the glorious music of such operas as Tannhauser, Lohengrin, Tristan and Isolde, and the Ring cycle is by no means Wagner's only legacy to posterity. The great composer was anxious to leave the world a true portrait of himself; he fully realized that he was a man of amazing ability; he knew that the story of his romantic life would be a subject of endless discussion and would hold the engrossed attention of all those who longed to gain the fullest understanding and enjoyment of his music.

Ernest Newman of the London Times, the most influential music critic on either side of the Atlantic and the author of many widely read books, among them THE STORIES OF THE GREAT OPERAS AND THEIR COMPOSERS, has made an exhaustive study of the vast mass of original Wagnerian manterial and from it he has written this invaluable study of the man and the artist. It is a story of overwhelming ambition, a story lit with the love of devoted women to whose sympathy their hero was ever susceptible, a story of artistic triumphs, financial failure, and personal passion.

A knowledge of Mr. Newman's book will enable you to appreciate, as never before, what lay behind the enduring beauty of Wagner's superlative music -- music which in its passages of turbulent majesty as well as in those of uplifted flight of soul reflects the proud, indomitable spirit of the unbridled genius who composed it.

Richard Wagner is an important figure for a number of reasons. He is the composer of the Ring Cycle of Operas, Tristun and Isolde and the Maestersingers of Nuremburg. His music at one point was seen as the intellectual pinnacle of Opera. In more recent years his reputation has faded and a good deal of his early stature has been seen as the result of remorseless self promotion.

Wagner is of German origin and worked as a conductor writing in his spare time two operas which were not successful. His first success came with Riezi his third work. He began to estalish impressive credentials with The Flying Dutchman, Tanhauser and Loehengrin.

Wagner had a powerful intellect and was a theatrical innovator. He was the first one to darken the theatre to increase the mystery of the performance. He wrote a large number of essays and academic works which are now unreadable arguing for a new form of art which he described was music drama. Prior to Wagner Operas had been broken into arias, duets, and ensemble pieces. The feel of an Opera was a collection of different tunes. Wagner argued that a Music Drama should flow and he developed the use of musical signatures to represent characters and moods. He also increased he size of the Orchestra and its importance in communicating the message of the Drama.

Wagner as a person was reprehensible. He stole money refused to pay back loans and stole the wife of his greatest disciple. He was also vain, anti Semitic and personally unpleasant. Despite this he has always been seen as one of music's towering figures.

Newman is a disciple of Wagner and he has been seduced by the myth. His book is close to that of adoration rather than a dispassionate account of his life. Never the less it is an interesting work.

This paperback is a collection of some of Richard Wagner's writings, viz:

1)
To the German Army Before Paris (a short, and unimportant poem meant to be set to music by another composer);
2)
A Capitulation (a second-rate burlesque, lampooning the French);
3)
Reminiscences of Auber (where Wagner gives a back-handed compliment to the French by praising an obscure French composer and an even more obscure opera);
4)
Beethoven (which is about Wagner himself and his feelings about music much more than it is about Beethoven);
5)
The Destiny of Opera (here, Wagner re-plows the same ground as in "Opera and Drama");
6)
Actors and Singers (a long article where Wagner critiques the theater stage, not to be confused with the opera stage);
7)
The Rendering of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony (detailing the "improvements" he made in the orchestration; the performance was for the dedication of the foundation stone laying at Bayreuth);
8)
Letters (to an Actor; to an Italian Friend [Arrigo Boito] on the Production of "Lohengrin" at Bologna; to the Burgomaster of Bologna; to Friedrich Nietzsche);
9)
Some minor (short) essays (a Glance at the German Operatic Stage of Today [detailing his criticisms about the German opera houses he visited while scouting for talent for his upcoming Ring performances at his new opera house in Bayreuth] ; on the Name "MusikDrama"; Prologue to a Reading of "Die Götterdämmerung Before a Select Audience in Berlin").
10)
two reports about Bayreuth (where he is starting the construction of his personal opera house)

In 1893, the London Wagner Society published an English translation of the 8 volume set of Wagner's Collected Works. William Ashton Ellis supplied the rather clumsy English translation, perhaps excusable since Wagner's prose was equally clumsy. "Actors and Singers" is a reprint of volume 5 of that set, which covers the years 1870-1873. Note that the title "Actors and Singers" is merely one of the articles contained therein and does not constitute the entirety of the book (it is, however, the longest one, but not the most important one); in fact, it could have any one of a number of titles, including "Beethoven" or "The Destiny of Opera".

Do I recommend this book? Well, it is all written by Richard Wagner, so it is by nature at least a little interesting. Much of the material here is pretty inconsequential. Only "Beethoven" was of great interest to me, and, to a lesser degree, "A Glance at the German Operatic Stage of Today". I do recommend it for that reason alone, but my endorsement is rather lukewarm.

Osborne gives some background on the writing of each of the mature Wagner operas. Then a quick plot summary, with some of the key musical themes. Since a synopsis comes with every complete opera recording, I'm not sure how useful these synopses are. We get too much explanation of plot and not enough critical commentary, by my standards. And little in the commentary is new; Ernest Newman's book "Wagner Nights", though 50 or so years older, is still a better introduction, making the same points as Osborne, and more.

Not all the commentary is reliable; the chapter on "Parsifal" buys into some of the nonsense first talked by Robert Gutman about this opera (the Grail knights as homosexual SS order, and so on), which has been comprehensively and devastatingly demolished by Lucy Becket in her book "Parsifal".

I find Osborne's "even-handedness" a little irritating at times. "Tristan und Isolde", he says, is a masterpiece, though it's too long, of course. That reminds me of Mozart's reply to the Emperor who thought his "Il Seraglio" score had "too many notes": "Which notes do you think I should take out?" (I'm quoting the "Amadeus" movie there, and from memory, so that's not quite what was really said, but close enough.) Like Mozart, I find that a dumb comment, unless Osborne cares to tell us which parts of "Tristan" etc we should do away with to make it shorter. And I think the job of someone writing an introduction to any composer is to be critical, certainly, but also to communicate enthusiasm, not weariness.

So for new insights, Tanner, Magee, Millington are better, and for "sources, plot plot summary plus musical commentary" Newman is better. It's not actually bad, just mediocre. Also, unlike Newman Osborne covers the first three Wagner operas, "Die Feen", "Das Liebesverbot" and "Reinzi", so that's quite useful.

Laon

The German word "Erdball" means "world". It takes a weird translator to want to render it into English as "Earthball". H Ashton Ellis is that translator, a man who, in learning German, forgot all his English. Ellis translates German compound words not with plain English but with strange Germanic formulations, eg "leg-dancers", or "tone-arranger" for a German word that simply means "composer". So while it's good to have these Wagner texts available in English, it's a shame that the re-appearance of these awful translations in a modern edition will publishers from commissioning a new, competent, plain-English translation discourage. Ellis also makes Wagner's "Das Judentum in Musik" harder to evaluate by introducing antisemitic overtones (perhaps of his own) where the Wagner text doesn't justify it. For example, the Ellis text describes Mendelsohn as "a Jew composer", which has a hostile, sneering, sound to it. But Wagner's text has "Judaische"; the correct translation is the merely descriptive "a Jewish composer". There are other, similar examples.

As for Wagner, "Das Judentum in Musik"'s argument is that because [in mod-19th Century Europe] Jews are partly involved in the cultures amongst which they live, and are partly separate and aloof from them, their music and poetry don't have the warmth, depth and humanity that come from having strong folk roots; Jewish art, while Jews remain apart and not assimilated into the mainstream "folk", is likely to be imitative, clever, ironical, and so on, but not deep or passionate.

The essay brings no comfort to Wagner-lovers, but not quite as much comfort to Wagner-haters as is sometimes claimed. Some people, by no means antisemitic, eg Patrick Magee, defend Wagner's analysis (stripped of its few paragraphs of merely racist writing). The essay makes an argument about the need for art to have folk roots if it is to be great. Me, I'd say its too easy to find counter-examples, for Wagner's analysis to stand. Personally, if I were to defend any part of the essay it would be Wagner's valuing of sincere emotional expression in art over irony. We're starting to hear the phrase "post-irony", but it's not yet a reality. I'd welcome a trend back to having the courage to express emotion, in life as well as art, without always hiding behind quote marks. One of Wagner's merits is as supreme non-ironist.

But, point out the detractors, rightly, there's a strong thread of antisemitism in amongst Wagner's discussion of culture and of art in this essay. There is a tone of "balance" in most of Wagner's paragraphs, an assumption of the mask of mere intellectual curiosity over the odd position of Jewish musicians and poets in the mid-19th Century. But in some paragraphs animosity shows through undisguised.

On the other hand, the essay is not the same thing as the political antisemitism that had its horrifying culmination under the Nazis. Wagner's subject was the arts. And his proposed "remedy" was for Jews to assimilate into the mainstream population and lose their separate identity. That's a despicably racist idea (why should they, if they don't want to?), but it's diametrically the opposite of what the Nazis called for - racial segregation followed by mass murder. Reading it, you'll find that the essay contains specific offensive passages, and is permeated by ideas we now find offensive, but that it is not simply a screed of racial or religious bigotry; mostly the text argues about art and music. In sum, anyone who loves Wagner's music will wish he'd never written or published "Das Judentum in Musik". It disfigures the man's posthumous reputation. But nor is it quite the screed of racial vilification it is sometimes made out to be. Wagner was a bigot and a crank, but not a monster. The book gets three stars, because though it is an appalling translation of a bad essay, it does at least make this infamous essay available for people to judge it for themnselves.

Laon

The title of this review is perhaps appropriate, as only one with the approximate intelligence of Elmer Fudd would give any merit to this convoluted, highly questionable stab at serious scholarship. And no, I'm not a hopeless Wagnerian who tailgates at the elitist festival at Bayreuth or who owns 50 different copies of Die Feen on CD. Wagner's anti-Semitism was real enough, but this book goes so far over the deep end that in the end it actually comes close to redeeming the accused (to a certain extent).

While not as obviously venomous as Paul Lawrence Rose's Wagner: Race, Revolution & Redemption, RW & the Anti-Semitic Imagination is just as questionable. Weiner's thesis is that all of the unpleasant characters in Wagner's later operas, with their appearance, smells & voices, are clandestine Jews. Weiner uses such airtight evidence as using another composer's (Mussorgsky) alleged anti-Semitic work to prove that Wagner was doing the same. I hope Mr. Weiner is never my attorney.

One of Weiner's favorite examples in trying to prove his thesis is The Ring's Alberich. Alberich is short, ugly, greedy, manipulative, and cruel to his own race. According to Weiner, this is proof positive that this character is a metaphor for Jewish people. Well....the Nibelungen, the race that Alberich enslaves with the ring & is a member of, were peaceful & not portayed by Wagner in a bad light before Alberich used the nasty little trinket. I suppose it never occurred to Weiner that the Nibelungen were depicted as dwarves in the saga centuries before Wagner even set the tale to music. Of the Nibelungen, only Alberich, Mime, and Hagen are shown as ruthless. The rest are downtrodden. Incidentally, Alberich is the only major character to survive the whole Ring cycle. If Wagner had truly genocidal feelings towards this metaphor, surely he would have had Wotan spear him in Rheingold.

Secondly, Weiner claims that Wagner had Hegelian notions of "the East" being a place of degeneracy and fear, while "the West" was enlightened. However, anyone who knows even a little about Wagner knows that Schopenhauer was a much bigger influence on his thinking than Hegel ever was. What were those statues of Buddha doing at Wahnfried? Why exactly did Wagner become a vegetarian? What is the entire premise of Tristan und Isolde? It was Schopenhauer's love of Eastern thought (primarily Buddhism) that motivated Wagner to formulate such things. Buddhist resignation, rather than any Teutonic drive to conquer, is at the heart of Wagner's later masterpieces.

If you want some good books that deal specifically with Wagner's anti-Semitism, I suggest Ring of Myths and/or The Darker Side of Genius. Unfortunately, both of these books are a little over Elmer's head.

Wagner's art is too profound and rich to be viewed as Marc Weiner desperately tries to convince us it should, ie, a tool of hate propaganda. Taking Weiner too serioulsly would only impoverish our experience of Wagner's operas. Weiner is so bigoted that he can only see hate in every note of Wagner's operas. Do not let it diminish the rich experience there is in Wagner's works awating for those who want to really explore them.

The most naked flaw of the book is that its rather simple themes are described in graduate school vocabulary of the most indulgent kind. Often, complex ideas require complex language. But here, there is little complexity beyond word choice. For example, instead of 'walk' Weiner consistently chooses 'perambulate'. Is MW's tongue in his cheek? Is he punishing us for all his years of educational drudgery? Is he (un)consciously emulating Wagner's steriotype of Jewish intellectuals being little more than stuffed shirts spouting flashy, showy, yet ultimately shallow knowledge? Other examples:

perambulatory peregrination

topoi, gustatory, mephitic

(he uses vouchafe at least 4 times!)

A big diction (my penis may be small but I have a huge diction...) is an asset, but MW continually trips over it. Obsfucation, like sloppy handwriting, is an aid to the inept--it forces the confused reader to assume that the writer has made some sort of profound point when in fact there is little beyond the vocabulary. But this style is endemic to academia, and it contributes to no one 'in the real world' taking academics seriously. More odiously, an anti-semite could take such an observation, combine it with the disproportionate representation of Jews in the academy vis a vis general population, and conclude that MW's book is evidence of the deleterious effect of Jewish thinking on higher education [pretentious word choice deliberate]. In this light, MW's book becomes fodder for high-brow anti-semites--and I assume that this was not his point. But again, this is a style problem, and there are much worse examples out there, I just can't think of one right now.

The content is simple. But even more simple than MW realizes. In the 19th c. Jews were often associated with 'bad' or evil attributes. So much so, that if one were to make an opera with an evil character, then the attributes of that character could be construed as Jewish. Furthermore, there any fool can find anti-semitism in a Wagner opera, particularly if one looks for it. But that is the beauty of Wagner. There is such a degree of complexity to his work, so many levels of interpretation, that one can find a myriad of meanings. I believe MW is on to something. But it is not profound, it is overdone, and it misses much more profound and meaningful levels of interpretation. The book would make a nice thesis, especially if it was shortened to about 100pp. But the book oversimplifies Wagner's operas, and it has the potential to ruin a reader's couriosity in Wagnerian opera, especially if that reader is sensitive and Jewish. And if you want to hate Wagner as a person, which I do, or if you think you like him, read 'Köhler's Nietsche and Wagner, A Lesson in Subjugation'. Here is a book that gives you more than you thought possible. And if you want some high-brow-dirt on Wagner or Nietzsche, its here.

All enthusiasts of Richard Wagner and his music dramas will want to read this book, particularly if they have, as I do, an interest in the history of the Bayreuth Festspiele.
The history of the Bayreuth Festival is indeed largely a history of Germany from the 1870's until present time, a story of creativity, courage, deception, obsession, betrayal, hypocrisy, occasional mismanagement, arrogance, abuse, and family dysfunction. The intriguing story is one that has been related many times in many different ways, usually by members of the notorious Wagner family or by participants in the festival. Hans Mayer's book, however, is a hodgepodge of disorganized material, misleading statements, and euphemisms. There are crucial personalities and events that define the history of the festival that he plainly ignores. It is impossible to understand the mythos of the Festival from Mayer's book. His handling of the Hitler years and the aftermath of the war are particularly misleading and deceptive. The book is clearly a disservice to Bayreuth and to Wagner scholarship. Some of the book even excuses or whitewashes the ignominious events that took place there. Even the pictures he utilizes have been published many times, usually with more commentary as to their relevance. Avoid this book unless you are a Wagner fanatic who must read everything about the composer. Read, instead, Frederick Spotts' excellent analysis, "Bayreuth - A History of the Wagner Festival," or "Bayreuth, the Early Years," edited by Robert Hartford. These are two books worth studying. One also has the pick of personal accounts written by Wolfgang, Wieland, and Friedelind, (three grandchildren of Richard Wagner), or explosive exposes by Gottfried and Nike of the newer generation. All these books also contain half-truths, untruths, and deceptions, but they are compulsory reading for any Wagnerian who wishes to gain knowledge of the mystique that Bayreuth possesses. Hans Mayer's book is deficient in all ways of communicating that mystique.

This work is an absolute atrocity and has no use other then fire starter... or for a good laugh!!
These claimed erudites and doctors with there Phds etc. etc.
Reveal that they know less than infants when it comes to a matter of true glory!!
This book is the bashing of one of the greatest Spirits in history RICHARD WAGNER!!!!!!!!
Why Bother writing a book just to insult someone???

To all those involved in the creation of this work, my heart goes out to you, for you know not what you do. FOOLS!

This book does not even deserve a rating.

WAGNER IS A MASTER!!!!!