Wagner: Race and Revolution - Hardcover

Rose, Paul Lawrence

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300051824 ISBN 13: 9780300051827

Publisher: Yale Univ Pr, 1992

Synopsis

This book looks at whether Wagner was a forerunner of Nazism, or a true believer in human liberation - a racist or a revolutionary? The author of this book argues that the debate until now has been misconceived, that Wagner was an important shaper of the peculiarly racist revolutionism which was to triumph so devastatingly under Hitler. The author reinterprets Wagner's career against a compelling backdrop of contemporary history and ideology, with profound implications for the understanding of the operas, from the "Ring" cycle to "Parsifal".

About this title

From the Back Cover:

It has long been acknowledged that Richard Wagner was a virulent antisemite, yet the composer has also been characterized as an idealistic revolutionary. In this fascinating book, Paul Lawrence Rose argues that for Wagner, as for many other Germans, the idea of revolution always contained a racial and antisemitic core. He offers fresh and stimulating interpretations of Wagner's operas based on an analysis of their revolutionary and antisemitic elements.

About this edition

• Publisher: Yale Univ Pr
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0300051824
• ISBN 13: 9780300051827
• Binding: Hardcover