Richard Wagner: The Last of the Titans Book

â??The most stimulating study of Wagner to have been published for years. An enthralling read.â?â??Barry Millington

In this new biography of Richard Wagner, Joachim Köhler draws on social and political analysis, documentary interpretation, and psychological insights to paint a rounded picture of Wagner as both a controversial historical phenomenon and a complex human being.

Köhlerâ??s reading of the letters, diaries, and other documents of the main protagonists, some of them unfamiliar even to seasoned Wagnerians, results in some breathtaking but convincing reappraisals. He examines Wagnerâ??s love affairs with Jessie Laussot, Mathilde Wesendonck, and Judith Gautier and assesses their lasting emotional effect. He re-evaluates Wagnerâ??s relationships with his mother, step-father, sister, andâ??most revealinglyâ??his wife, Cosima, a relationship seen as based on fear rather than love. Köhler explores the philosophical roots of Wagnerâ??s work, which the composer himself deliberately obfuscated. And he analyzes Wagnerâ??s relationship with King Ludwig, whom Wagner is revealed to have blackmailed, and with Nietzsche, whom he tried to destroy.

The traumas of his youth haunted Wagner throughout his life, as his emotional development underlay his notorious anti-semitism. Köhlerâ??s interpretation of Wagnerâ??s dreams, as recorded in Cosimaâ??s diaries, offers astonishing insights into the paranoia and insecurity of a man who was one of the leading composers of his age.

Joachim Köhler is the author of Nietzsche and Wagner: A Lesson in Subjugation, and Zarathustraâ??s Secret: The Interior Life of Friedrich Nietzsche, both published by Yale University Press. He is also the author of Wagnerâ??s Hitler. Stewart Spencer is editor of The Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, Wagnerâ??s Ring, and Wagner Remembered.