An invitation to reassess one of the greatest German composers, and consider whether he merits the darkening of his image during the past 60 years.


Wagner has the most villainous reputation of any figure in the arts. He is often held to have inspired Hitler's murderous anti-Semitism, and an army of ruthless mercenaries-the Wagner Group-has taken its name from him. Yet many of the worst things laid to his charge are based on misconstruction or even fabrication: on a letter he never wrote, or opinions he never expressed. Key passages in Cosima Wagner's diaries have been misinterpreted through failure to check their background. In Wagner: The Invention of a Monster, Derek Hughes re examines this controversial figure, tracing the progressive falsifications of his opinions from the 1960s to the present day. There is much new research into the early reception and understanding of his operas, and Hughes contrasts modern assessments of the composer with those current in Wagner's own era, and then during the Third Reich. Ultimately, the book reaches a perhaps surprising conclusion: many modern critics see more Nazism in Wagner than the Nazis ever did.