From the smoky music halls of 1860s Paris to the tumbling skyscrapers of twenty-first-century New York, a sweeping tale of passion, music, and the human heart’s yearning for connection.
 
An unlikely quartet is bound together across centuries and continents by the strange and spectacular history of Richard Wagner’s masterpiece opera Tristan and Isolde.
Martin is a forty-year-old lawyer who, despite his success,...

"A large-canvas narrative history, charting the impact of the cultural titan Wagner on art and politics. Ross will show how various artists--composers, novelists, poets, filmmakers--wrestled with the legacy of Wagner in the twentieth century"--

Ranging far beyond the bounds of conventional biography and music history, this book examines the cultural background of Wagner's art, including the nether regions of nationalism and racism.

"The vital, carefully crafted discussion on Wagner's masterpiece, offering deep insight into both the work itself and profound perspective on certain key philosophical questions. Richard Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung is one of the greatest works of art created in modern times, and has fascinated both critics and devotees for over a century and a half. No recent study has examined the meaning of Wagner's masterpiece with the attention to detail and...

Best known for the four-opera cycle The Ring of the Nibelung, Richard Wagner (1813—83) was a conductor, librettist, theater director, and essayist, in addition to being the composer of some of the most enduring operatic works in history. Though his influence on the development of European music is indisputable, Wagner was also quite outspoken on the politics and culture of his time. His ideas traveled beyond musical circles into philosophy, literature,...