recently, within the past two yeas i believe, many have shown a new interest in the works of Wagner because of the anniversary of his ring cycle or whatnot and a lot of great classical organizations have been performing the ring cycle in their entirety, not in one night per say but over the period of a week or so because they are approximately the equivalent of 24 hours of music or something like that. its insane. but i know that there are mixed views about Wagner because of the time period he was writing in and his political views and the people he hung out with. now more and more people are looking past the fact that his was a terrible Antisemite and that he was linked with the Nazi party and looking at his works as the masterpieces of music that they are. so i was wondering how people feel about Wagner.

i believe his works are brilliant he really made way for a lot of the musical aspects that we see in theater today like his leitmotifs which is the thematic material that announces character in his works. its carried over into almost everything today. harry potter has leitmotif in the movies, so does Jack Sparrow. Andrew Lloyd Webber uses them in his productions for example everyone knows the theme of the Phantom in descending, chromatic chords.

but to say that he was only an amazing composer would be turning away from his terrible political views and beliefs.

So what do people think of Wagner now?

whatever his political preferences were, it can't be denied he was an influencial composer, one of the greatest composers of all time. i believe that when discussing Wagner, or any other controversial composer, we must separate the man from his works, otherwise where would all the composers be now? most of them were not saint, yet it doesn't make their music any worse to me.

oh and wagner's music rocks, it's so magical sometimes, it makes the imagination work which is a big plus :)

I really want to see his
opera on the epic poem
"Der Ring Des Nibelungen".
I'm just too lazy right now
though.

First place I heard his stuff was in the movie 'Excalibur' where they keep using the 'Death of Seigfreid' music at crucial scenes.

I can't help tho, after seeing Russell's weird 'Lizstomania' movie from the 70s, to picture Wagner as this Frankenstein Hitler guy.

That said, I saw a cool vid of the first performance of the Ring after the Berlin Wall came down. Before that getting to Beirut was hard to do.