Aspects of Wagner

The man whom W. H. Auden called `perhaps the greatest genius that ever lived' has inspired both greater adulation and greater loathing than any other composer. In this penetrating analysis, Bryan Magee outlines the range and depth of Wagner's achievement, and shows how his complex and often erotic music expresses the repressed and highly charged contents of the psyche. He also examines Wagner's detailed stage directions, and the prose works in which he formulated his ideas, and sheds interesting new light on his anti-semitism.