Providing an overall account of the history of the Wagner festival, a critical analysis of its performers, productions, and enthusiasts establishes its remarkable beginnings, controversial associations, and surprising successes

What do Wagner's music, his writings and his familiy have to do with Hitler and Nazi-Germany? A question that easily arises when one looks at the use and position of Wagner's music in the Third Reich. What importance had Bayreuth for Hitler and Hitler for Bayreuth? How was the relationship between the Festspiele-Chief Winifred Wagner and Adolf Hitler? And how was Richard Wagner's attitude towards the Jews? Was the author of the pamphlet "On Judaism in Music" even a pioneer of Hitler? This essay should be helpful to find some answers.

Das Buch beschreibt die Bestände des Lastenausgleichsarchivs in Bayreuth und untersucht diese in Hinblick auf die Nutzung für familiengeschichtliche und gewerblich-genealogische Zwecke.

Richard Wagner (1813-1883) is one of the most influential - and also one of the most controversial - 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. It considers a wide 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; the anti-semitism that is undeniably present in the operas; their proto-cinematic nature; and the turbulent legacy both of the Bayreuth Festival and of Wagnerism itself. 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 volume's arrangement - unique among books on the composer -combines an accessible text, intriguing images and original documents, thus ensuring a consistently fresh approach. Bringing new insights to an endlessly fascinating subject, The Sorcerer of Bayreuth will charm anyone interested in music and in the wider cultural life of the 19th century and beyond.