A wonderful look into the mind and life of Wagner, complete with gossip and background. Callow managed to put out a compact but concise organization of Wagner - this is the perfect introduction to such a complicated man.

"Simon Callow, the celebrated author of Orson Welles, delivers a dazzling, swift, and accessible biography of the musical titan Richard Wagner and his profoundly problematic legacy--a fresh take for seasoned acolytes and the perfect introduction for new fans.

Richard Wagner's music dramas have never been more popular or more divisive. His ten masterpieces, created against the backdrop of a continent in severe political and cultural upheaval, constitute an unmatched body of work. A man who spent most of his life in abject poverty, inspiring both critical derision and hysterical hero-worship, Wagner was a walking contradiction: belligerent, flirtatious, disciplined, capricious, demanding, visionary, and poisonously anti-Semitic. Acclaimed biographer Simon Callow evokes the intellectual and artistic climate in which Wagner lived and takes us through his most iconic works, from his pivotal successes in The Flying Dutchman and Lohengrin, to the musical paradigm shift contained in Tristan and Isolde, to the apogee of his achievements in The Ring of the Nibelung and Parsifal, which debuted at Bayreuth shortly before his death. Being Wagner brings to life this towering figure, creator of the most sublime and most controversial body of work ever known."

It's Simon Callow, whatever he does is pretty damn awesome.

Callow offers a streamlined life of Wagner, approaching him warts and all, and attempting to explain how he managed, while being a gigantic pain in the ass, to embody the romantic rise of a unified Germany and the source of such destructive admiration. I always enjoy telling students in the 19th century class about the time Wagner and Bakunin tried to overthrow of the Saxon monarchy by attacking the Dresden post office in 1848, but this also includes Wagner's dysfunctional home life, his love of dogs, how being both anti-Semitic and anti-militarist made it really lonely in Wilhelmhine Germany, and how he nurtured a poisonous legacy.