BAYREUTH, Germany (Reuters) - Former German infantryman Hans Himsel lived through scenes in 1944 at the Bayreuth opera house worthy of the finale of Richard Wagner's "Gotterdammerung" when Valhalla ...

Willa Cather, Thomas Mann, and WEB Du Bois all drew on his work. Hitler was his most fateful disciple. Has the composer’s legacy been misunderstood? At the beginning of Siegfried, the third opera in ...

In Germany, every crop-haired infant Siegfried, every pig-tailed little Brünnhilde counts Richard Wagner one of Nazidom’s special heroes. Composer Wagner not only glorified pagan German gods and ...

A new exhibition at the country’s national history museum examines the strong feelings stirred by its most famous 19th-century composer. By Ben Miller BERLIN — Few composers inspire such a mix of ...

Richard Wagner was, and still is today, arguably the most controversial figure in classical music. A self-appointed deity and hyperdriven genius, Wagner is often considered the ultimate megalomaniac.

Adolf Hitler loved music—especially Wagner. In Mein Kampf, he had written: “My youthful enthusiasm for the Bayreuth master knew no bounds.” The Third Reich, Hitler said, had its foundations in the ...