Wagner
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Richard Wagner who, perhaps more than any other composer, would seem to capture the greatest triumphs and most terrifying excesses of the German spirit. He lived as modern Germany was being born and his republicanism led to exile and nearly execution. He was a mentor of Nietzsche and a disciple of Schopenhauer and changed the face of opera perhaps more than any other single person. Wagner conducted several orchestras and numerous affairs, suffered poverty and rejection but was finally showered with wealth by King Ludwig II. When the Nazis played his music in the death camps was it a fitting tribute to a gross anti-Semite or a travesty for a man who believed in redemption through love and social equality? We ask to what extent can Wagner be typified as demonstrating the German spirit and what were his views on the function of art?
Guests
- John Deathridge
3 episodes
King Edward the Seventh Professor of Music, Kings College London -
Lucy Beckett No other episodes
Author of Richard Wagner: Parsifal -
Michael Tanner No other episodes
Philosopher and author of Wagner and Nietzsche
Related episodes
-
Goethe
6 Apr, 2006 830 German and related literatures -
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
10 Feb, 2000 830 German and related literatures -
Beethoven
21 Dec, 2017 780 Music -
Walter Benjamin
10 Feb, 2022 190 Modern Western Philosophy -
Schopenhauer
29 Oct, 2009 190 Modern Western Philosophy -
The Nibelungenlied
1 Dec, 2022 830 German and related literatures -
Auden
19 Dec, 2019 820 English and Old English literatures -
Sturm und Drang
14 Oct, 2010 830 German and related literatures -
Fritz Lang
30 Dec, 2021 790 Recreational and performing arts -
Hitler in History
5 Oct, 2000 940 History of Europe -
Hegel’s Philosophy of History
26 May, 2022 900 History -
Bismarck
22 Mar, 2007 940 History of Europe -
Moses Mendelssohn
22 Mar, 2012 100 Philosophy -
Writing and Political Oppression
8 Apr, 1999 320 Political science -
Wittgenstein
4 Dec, 2003 190 Modern Western Philosophy -
Hannah Arendt
25 Jun, 2020 320 Political science -
Oscar Wilde
6 Dec, 2001 820 English and Old English literatures -
The Frankfurt School
14 Jan, 2010 300 Social sciences, sociology and anthropology -
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
27 Sep, 2018 230 Christianity -
Rudolph II
31 Jan, 2008 940 History of Europe
Programme ID: p00548gv
Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00548gv
Auto-category: 780 (Music)