Millington, Barry.
New York : Oxford University Press, c2012.
Added to CLICnet on 04/07/2016

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Notes:

• Includes bibliographical references and index.
• Father of the man : paternity and childhood — Learning the craft : youthful apprenticeship — Earning his keep : first professional appointments — Under the yoke : Kapellmeister in Dresden — The eternal wanderer : Der fliegende Holländer — Desperately seeking Venus : Tannhäuser — Swansong to traditional opera : Lohengrin — Revolutionary road : uprising in Dresden — The Zurich years : Wagner’s exile in Switzerland — The rise and fall of Valhalla : Der Ring des Nibelungen — ‘Most excellent friend’ : Franz Liszt — Muses, mistresses and mother-figures : Wagner’s women — The behemoth of Bayreuth : Wagner’s personality — Always short : Wagner and money — In the pink : the role of silks and satins in Wagner’s life — ‘My adored and angelic friend’ : Ludwig II — Fatal attraction : Tristan und Isolde — ‘Art is what matters here’ : Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg — Grit in the oyster : the role of anti-Semitism in Wagner’s life and work — Creative spark : sources of inspiration in Wagner’s work — The silent sufferer : Cosima Wagner — Tribschen idyll : the Lucerne years — A home for the gods : the Bayreuth project — Wagner’s last card : Parsifal — Death in Venice : the events of Wagner’s last days — Perfect and imperfect Wagnerites : the spread of the Wagner cult — Panning for gold : Wagner and cinema — Swastikas over Bayreuth : Wagner and the Third Reich — Regime change : the grandsons usher in the era of new Bayreuth — Renewing the legacy : Bayreuth today and in the future.
• Richard Wagner (1813-1883) is one of the most influential–and also one of the most controversial–composers in the history of music. Over the course of his long career, he produced a stream of spellbinding works that challenged musical convention through their richness and tonal experimentation, ultimately paving the way for modernism. This book presents an in-depth but easy-to-read overview of Wagner’s life, work and times. It considers a wide range of themes, including the composer’s original sources of inspiration his fetish for exotic silks his relationship with his wife, Cosima, and with his mistress, Mathilde Wesendonck the anti-semitism that is undeniably present in the operas their proto-cinematic nature and the turbulent legacy both of the Bayreuth Festival and of Wagnerism itself. Making use of the very latest scholarship–much of it undertaken by the author himself in connection with his editorship of The Wagner Journal–Millington reassesses received notions about Wagner and his work, demolishing ill-informed opinion in favour of proper critical understanding. It is a radical–and occasionally controversial–reappraisal of this most perplexing of composers. The volume’s arrangement–unique among books on the composer–combines an accessible text, intriguing images and original documents, thus ensuring a consistently fresh approach. Bringing new insights to an endlessly fascinating subject, The Sorcerer of Bayreuth will charm anyone interested in music and in the wider cultural life of the 19th century and beyond. –book jacket.

Subjects:

• Wagner, Richard, 1813-1883.
• Composers — Germany — Biography.
• Wagner, Richard, 1813-1883 — Criticism and interpretation.
• Opera — 19th century.

Requested by Klemp, M. & Diamond, D.