Barry Millington – författare

Published in the run-up to the 200th anniversary of the composer’s birth in 2013, and written by one of the most distinguished Wagner scholars in the world, this will be the Wagner book of the bicentenary. Richard Wagner (1813–1883) is one of the most influential – and also one of the most polarizing – composers in the history of music. Over the course of his long career, he produced a stream of spellbinding works that challenged musical convention through their richness and tonal experimentation, ultimately paving the way for modernism. This book presents an in-depth but easy-to-read overview of Wagner’s life, work and times. Making use of the very latest scholarship – much of it undertaken by the author himself in connection with his editorship of The Wagner Journal – Millington reassesses received notions about Wagner and his work, demolishing ill-informed opinion in favour of proper critical understanding. It is a radical – and occasionally controversial – reappraisal of this most perplexing of composers. The book considers a whole range of themes, including the composer’s original sources of inspiration; his fetish for exotic silks; his relationship with his wife, Cosima, and with his mistress, Mathilde Wesendonck; his anti-semitism; the operas’ proto-cinematic nature; and the turbulent legacy both of the Bayreuth Festival and of Wagnerism itself. The volume’s arrangement – unique among books on the composer – combines an accessible text, intriguing images and original documents in carefully co-ordinated sections, thus ensuring a consistently fresh approach.

The most controversial musical figure of the 19th century, Wagner was a great literary, philosophical, and political activist whose contribution to the development of German Romanticism was unrivalled by any of his contemporaries. His life and works may be said to crown the musical achievements of German Romanticism but they arouse passions like no other composer's. His works are hated as much as they are worshipped, but no one denies their greatness.This biography of Richard Wagner is one in a new series of composer biographies, derived and adapted from the second edition of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. These newly written biographies bring the best of the book-length pieces in The New Grove to a wider audience.Each title provides fresh new insights into the life and works of a major composer, derived from the most recent scholarship. In addition to a detailed and informative view of the subject's life and works, written by an expert in the field, each book includes comprehensive, tabular work-lists and a fully revised and updated bibliography.

Despite the voluminous literature on Wagner's operas, little has been published that does justice to all the elements of their performance. This book, addressed to both specialists and the opera-going public, brings together a team of authorities from around the world to examine the performance history and reception of Wagner's works in Europe and America.Essays on conducting, singing, production, and stage design of Wagner's works explore the revolutionary nature of the composer's demands on his interpreters. The book raises profound aesthetic questions about the realization of opera on the stage: the authority of the composer vis-a-vis the director and the audience; the sanctity of the text, score, and stage directions; and the role of art itself in society. The volume also considers the explosion in popularity of Wagner's music dramas and their ability to assume new meanings—on stage and in recordings—for successive generations. It looks at the often vociferous debate over vocal and conducting styles, at the origins of Bayreuth, and at the impact of Wagner on the musical life of New York and Vienna. The book is certain to raise the level of discussion about opera production generally and to enhance our enjoyment of Wagner's works in the opera house.

This is the first literal, word-for-word translation of Wagner’s epic masterwork with the full German text. Stewart Spencer's version is at once reliable and readable, adhering closely to the original verse form and to Wagner’s poetic intentions. The German text is given in parallel, and Spencer also contributes illuminating footnote and an introductory essay. Other specially commissioned essays discuss the Cycle’s musical structure, its philosophical implications, its medieval sources and Wagner’s own changing attitude to its meaning. An appendix of Wagner’s rejected versions, copious notes on the translation, a glossary of the names of characters in the Ring, an extensive bibliography and reviews of CD- and video-recordings conclude the volume.