WHETHER we admit or not the first dogma of the Wagner creed, that the individual arts have in past times reached their highest possible degree of development, and that the highest art-work of the ...

As the Bayreuth festival turns 150, we look at the composer’s huge and enduring influence, and wonder what might have happened to classical music in his absence?

A new exhibition at the country’s national history museum examines the strong feelings stirred by its most famous 19th-century composer. By Ben Miller BERLIN — Few composers inspire such a mix of ...

BAYREUTH, Germany (Reuters) - Former German infantryman Hans Himsel lived through scenes in 1944 at the Bayreuth opera house worthy of the finale of Richard Wagner's "Gotterdammerung" when Valhalla ...

In Germany, every crop-haired infant Siegfried, every pig-tailed little Brünnhilde counts Richard Wagner one of Nazidom’s special heroes. Composer Wagner not only glorified pagan German gods and ...

“This is a book about a musician’s influence on non-musicians,” Alex Ross says. That’s good, because I am a non-musician. Ross is the premier music critic in the United States, and Wagnerism often ...

Adolf Hitler loved music—especially Wagner. In Mein Kampf, he had written: “My youthful enthusiasm for the Bayreuth master knew no bounds.” The Third Reich, Hitler said, had its foundations in the ...