Opera North

“What is the tension between this ugly ideology, the beauty of the music, and the agony of the man producing it?” The final podcast of our trilogy focusing on Wagner's epic last opera is a wide-ranging, unflinching discussion between the journalist, writer and filmmaker https://www.paulmason.org/ (Paul Mason) and Professor https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/languages/staff/46/professor-frank-finlay (Frank Finlay) of the University of Leeds. Paul traces the composer’s changing philosophical viewpoints, from his early identification with the Young Hegelians and Ludwig Feuerbach, to the later influence of Arthur Schopenhauer and Buddhism on the themes of suffering and enlightenment through compassion in Parsifal, as well as the more baneful influence of the racial theorist Arthur de Gobineau. Wagner’s antisemitism is discussed in the context of his works and the problems it presents for their audiences. Another tension – between the composer’s anti-modernist, proto-fascist sympathies, and the radicalism in his music – is i