From Booklist
Wagner's life (1813-83) was marked by death, love, power, and abuse, all of which are present in his operas. His father died soon after Richard's birth, his stepfather and an uncle raised him, and his older sister Rosalie exerted the strongest female influence on him. There were many women in his subsequent life; his first marriage failed, though, and his second wife, Liszt's daughter Cosima, controlled him behind the scenes. Musically, he grew up with Weber, turning to Meyerbeer as a model for operatic writing. Add hatred of Jews to his makeup, stir the pot, and out came the Wagnerian themes of true love unattainable until death, power of the spiritual over the secular, and family cohesion surmounting all obstacles as well as an utterly personal musical idiom primarily committed to music supporting libretti. Kohler weaves together the events of Wagner's life, analyses of his operas' plots, and the relationships between people in the former and characters in the latter in a lengthy psychological study employing the works as windows on the life. Alan Hirsch
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Review
“Köhler . . . will give us Wagner uncut.”—Andrew Crumey, Scotland on Sunday


Book Description
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.

Köhler’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 Wagner’s love affairs with Jessie Laussot, Mathilde Wesendonck, and Judith Gautier and assesses their lasting emotional effect. He re-evaluates Wagner’s relationships with his mother, step-father, sister, and--most revealingly--his wife, Cosima, a relationship seen as based on fear rather than love. Köhler explores the philosophical roots of Wagner’s work, which the composer himself deliberately obfuscated. And he analyzes Wagner’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. Köhler’s interpretation of Wagner’s dreams, as recorded in Cosima’s diaries, offers astonishing insights into the paranoia and insecurity of a man who was one of the leading composers of his age.


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

FROM THE PUBLISHER