Emancipating the Redeemer: Kimberly Fairbrother Canton is stimulated by a new study of women and gender in Wagner

Review of Eva Rieger, Richard Wagner’s Women, tr. Chris Walton (Boydell Press, 2011). 

March 2012, Volume 6, Number 1, 85–8.

As the most comprehensive analysis of Wagner’s major female characters to date, Eva Rieger’s new book, in an excellent English translation by Chris Walton, is a welcome addition to the still incipient body of literature addressing Wagner’s treatment of women and gender. Allotting each of Wagner’s music dramas its own chapter, save the early operas up to Der fliegende Holländer, which are discussed together, Rieger systematically examines the major female characters in all of the music dramas to show the varied ways in which Wagner’s essentialist view of woman is manifest throughout his oeuvre.