The Wagners - Nike Wagner

In this fascinating book Nike Wagner, the great grand-daughter of the composer, exposes the dramas behind the ever-controversial Wagner family and the Bayreuth Festival. She discusses Richard Wagners life, his character and the music-dramas he wrote; the Bayreuth Festival; her father and the new style of Wagner production which he inaugurated after the Second World War; their relationship to extreme right-wing political movements; and the battles for the succession of the principality of the Festival. The book chronicles in detail the often horrifying internecine warfare within the family, and its relationship to the extreme right-wing ideologies which have dominated much of its history. The extraordinary role that Wagner and the Bayreuth Festival have played in German life is relayed with irony but no animosity, as Nike Wagner attempts to understand how such a sublime art should have been appropriated by a gang of semi-illiterate thugs for their own purposes.

This is a powerfully argued, richly informative book on Wagner, his operas and Bayreuth. Nike Wagner has performed a tour de force in writing a highly intelligent piece of cultural history on Wagners life and the legacy of his music.