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Extract: Alex Ross’s Wagnerism

In his new book, Alex Ross walks fearlessly into the snake pit of opinion and, in his words, “restores the magnificent confusion of what it means to be a Wagnerian”. In this extract, he looks at Wagner, women and love.

by Alex Ross on 23 November, 2020

Wagnerism

In his new book Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music, Alex Ross walks fearlessly into the snake pit of opinion and, in his words, “restores the magnificent confusion of what it means to be a Wagnerian”. In this extract, introduced by Clive Paget, he looks at Wagner, women and love.

Sensual or bombastic, compassionate or violent, decadent or modern. No artist in the last 150 years has polarised opinion quite like Richard Wagner. “He is a genius such as appears upon the earth once every thousand years,” swooned the French poet Villiers de L’Isle Adam. W. H. Auden, on the...