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.

“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 ...

This 1999 live recording captures the late conductor’s radical ear in bracing Mendelssohn, gossamer Wagner and a luminous Liebestod – from Violeta Urmana ...

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 ...

Richard Wagner -- the 19th century composer whose epic operas are considered to be among the greatest ever written and whose anti-Semitic views still cause controversy -- was born 200 years ago ...

Not to mention her great-grandfather. Bayreuth founder Wagner welcomed inventive perspectives on his works, though he only lived to see the "Ring" and "Parsifal" produced at the festival. He designed ...

Adolf Hitler loved music—especially Wagner. In Mein Kampf, he had written: “My youthful enthusiasm for the Bayreuth master knew no bounds.” The Third Reich, Hitler said, had its foundations in the ...

The composer Richard Wagner is well-known, even notorious, for writing operas that can challenge both performers and listeners. A new study reveals that Wagner set his text to music in a way that uses ...

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.