The Wagner Compendium: A Guide to Wagner's Life and Music

by Barry Millington

Book Overview

The grandiose operas of Richard Wagner - Tannhauser, the Ring Cycle and Tristan und Isolde - still affect audiences with their deeply symbolic dramatic expressions of love, fate and religious fervor. Yet, because of the association of his music with National Socialism and his own anti-Semitism, Wagner himself remains deeply controversial.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0028713591
• ISBN13: 9780028713595
• Release Date: January 1992
• Publisher: Schirmer G Books
• Length: 431 Pages
• Weight: 2.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 7.4" x 10.3"

Customer Reviews

Excellent essays on all aspects of this complex man

This is the most up-to-date and useful "general" volume on Wagner I have read. Rather than focusing on a single aspect of Wagner, this gives excellent, short and readable essays (by a variety of modern authors) on the historical and philosophical background; Wagners' views on his contemporaries, women, and the Jews (a particularly insightful essay on this difficult issue); Wagner's own writings; and fine short analysis of all of the music, not just the operas. This book is a mini-encyclopedia (though more comprehensive and readable than the new Grove entry). Well worth finding for anyone who has more than a passing interest in Wagner.