A Knight at the Opera examines the remarkable and unknown role that the medieval legend (and Wagner opera) Tannhäuser played in Jewish cultural life in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The book analyzes how three of the greatest Jewish thinkers of that era, Heinrich Heine, Theodor Herzl, and I. L. Peretz, used this central myth of Germany to strengthen Jewish culture and to attack anti-Semitism. In the original medieval myth, a Christian knight lives in sin with the seductive pagan goddess Venus in the Venusberg. He escapes her clutches and makes his way to Rome to seek absolution from the Pope. The Pope does not pardon Tannhäuser and he returns to the Venusberg. During the course of A Knight at the Opera, readers will see how Tannhäuser evolves from a medieval knight, to Heine's German scoundrel in early modern Europe, to Wagner's idealized German male, and finally to Peretz's pious Jewish scholar in the Land of Israel. Venus herself also undergoes major changes from a pagan goddess, to a lusty housewife, to an overbearing Jewish mother. The book also discusses how the founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, was so inspired by Wagner's opera that he wrote The Jewish State while attending performances of it, and he even had the Second Zionist Congress open to the music of Tannhäuser's overture. A Knight at the Opera uses Tannhäuser as a way to examine the changing relationship between Jews and the broader world during the advent of the modern era, and to question if any art, even that of a prominent anti-Semite, should be considered taboo.

Richard Wagner's "Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg" has been one of the most performed operas ever since its premier in 1868, as it epitomizes themes of Germanness. This volume examines the representation of German history in the opera and the way it has functioned in history through political appropriation and staging practice. in performance.

Friedrich Nietzsche regarded himself as the most musical philosopher--he played the piano, wrote his own compositions and espoused a philosophy encouraging all to dance for joy. Central to his life and his ideas were the music and personality of Richard Wagner, whom he both loved and loathed at different times of his life. Nietzsche had considerable influence on composers, many of whom employed Wagnerian sonorities to set his words and respond to his ideas. This book explores Nietzsche's relationship with Wagner, the influence of his writings on the music of Strauss, Mahler, Delius, Scriabin, Busoni and others, his place in Thomas Mann's critique of German Romantic music in the novel Doctor Faustus and his impact on 20th-century popular music.

In The Eroticization of Distance: Nietzsche, Blanchot and the Legacy of Courtly Love, Joseph D. Kuzma explores the significance of courtly erotic themes in Friedrich Nietzsche’s mature philosophy and in Maurice Blanchot’s writings of the 1940s and early 1950s. Rather than offering an account of erotic relationality that prioritizes reconciliation, fulfillment, or release, Nietzsche attempts to formulate a nonteleological eroticism that aims at nothing but the perpetual intensification of desire. Kuzma suggests that it is Blanchot who carries Nietzsche’s courtly erotic tendencies to their most provocative point, by highlighting potentials for intimate relationality that might be established through a shared experience of dispossession and loss. This first monograph to engage specifically with the theme of eroticism in Blanchot’s writings will be of interest not only to students and scholars of Nietzsche, Blanchot, or French philosophy, but also anyone interested in the philosophy of sexuality, the history of love, theories of the emotions, or nineteenth and twentieth-century European thought more generally.

A TIME Magazine Top 10 Nonfiction Book of 2012 A New Yorker Best Book of the Year Los Angeles Magazine's #1 Music Book of the Year This revelatory book of music history examines what is perhaps the best known and most-popular symphony ever written—and its famous four-note opening. Reaching back before Beethoven’s time, Matthew Guerrieri uncovers premonitions of the opening notes in the rhythms of ancient Greek poetry and the music of the French Revolution. He discusses the Fifth’s impact when it premiered, tracing the artistic, philosophical, and political reverberations across Europe to China, Russia, and the United States, from Romanticism to ring tones, from propaganda to pop. This fascinating piece of musical detective work is a treat for music lovers of every stripe.