What's to Love about Wagner? ; A Festival Celebrating the Controversial Composer's 200th Birthday Is a Chance to Set Aside Prejudices and Get Closer to the Music, Says Barry Millington

Millington, Barry, The Evening Standard (London, England)

AN INVETERATE scrounger and irredeemable philanderer who, not content with fleecing his friends, also helped himself to their wives; an egoist who was loathsome and untrustworthy in his personal dealings. In sum, a monster and anti-Semitic egoist: the Behemoth of Bayreuth. This is the stereotypical charge sheet against Richard Wagner (1813-1883). But there could be no better time than the 200th anniversary of the composer's birth to shoot down a few canards about the man. It might surprise many people to know that in fact Wagner's friends and colleagues found him inspiring (if unpredictably volcanic) company, generous to a fault, warmly encouraging to colleagues whose work he admired; he …

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Publication information: Article title: What's to Love about Wagner? ; A Festival Celebrating the Controversial Composer's 200th Birthday Is a Chance to Set Aside Prejudices and Get Closer to the Music, Says Barry Millington. Contributors: Millington, Barry - Author. Newspaper title: The Evening Standard (London, England). Publication date: February 6, 2013. Page number: 34. © Not available. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All Rights Reserved.

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