Richard Wagner: The Sorcerer of Bayreuth

Richard Wagner is one of the most influential - and 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 experimentation, ultimately paving the way for modernism.

Moving at a fast pace, the book encompasses a refreshingly wide range of themes, from the composer's sources of inspiration, his fetish for exotic silks, and his relationship with his wives and mistresses, to accusations of anti-Semitism, the operas' proto-cinematic nature, and the turbulent legacy both of the Bayreuth Festival and of Wagnerism itself.