The Real Wagner

In this unique and thoroughly engaging book Rudolph Sabor has set out to provide the reader with the means to make up his own mind about his controversial subject and to this end (and to avoid the 'for' or 'against' of so many Wagner biographies) has assembled, and in many cases translated for the first time, over 600 documents. These are arranged to illuminate the main areas of Wagner's namely, his prodigious childhood, his relations with women, his attitude to money and his involvements with King Ludwig of Bavaria, and with Bayreuth. Even the difficult subject of Wagner's anti-semitism is treated by Mr Sabor in the same informed, amused and even-handed way.
Many readers, and not only devotees of Wagner's music, are going to be grateful to the author for putting together this hugely informative and entertaining work whose irreverent tone cannot conceal scholarship and devotion of the highest order and which draws many wonderfully illuminating parallels between the subject's Life and his Works.
It is a fitting tribute to the man who received a 45-line Litany from his bride on their wedding day listing his virtues in gnomic verse, who was deluged with rusks by a former mistress after he had expressed a liking for them, and whose flair for interior decoration and dress make Cecil Beaton seem discreet.
And how can one finally deny him his genius or stay out of sorts with a man child-like enough to wish good things to happen (to 'I had a divine inspiration. You must get me a grand piano') and candid enough to admit that 'while I show great stupidity in making money, I possess unique gifts for spending it'?
Here is a man unlike other men. His writings and those of his contemporaries excerpted here are trenchant, vivid and vigorous. It is not surprising that Wolfgang Wagner, the composer's grandson and Director of the Bayreuth Festival, has put his imprimatur on this stupendous book.