Tristan's Shadow

Das Rheingold , Die Walküre , and Siegfried . Parsifal . Tristan und Isolde . Both revered and reviled, Richard Wagner conceived some of the nineteenth century’s most influential operas—and created some of the most indelible characters ever to grace the stage. But over the course of his polarizing career, Wagner also composed volumes of essays and pamphlets, some on topics seemingly quite distant from the opera house. His influential concept of Gesamtkunstwerk —the “total work of art”—famously a