Encyclopaedic Knowledge: Tash Siddiqui delivers her verdict on a comprehensive study of Wagner

Review of Nicholas Vazsonyi, ed., The Cambridge Wagner Encyclopedia (Cambridge University Press, 2013).

March 2015, Volume 9, Number 1, 72–6.

It should be made clear at the outset, dear reader, that this critic’s main qualification for reviewing the present title is that she is virtually the only English-speaking writer on Wagner not to have contributed in some way to this remarkably encyclopaedic volume. It is edited by Nicholas Vazsonyi, author of Richard Wagner: Self-Promotion and the Making of a Brand and co-organiser of the bicentennial WagnerWorldWide 2013 series of conferences held at the universities of Bayreuth, Berne and South Carolina and at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. In his acknowledgments, Vazsonyi thanks his editorial advisory board: Celia Applegate, Thomas Grey, Barry Millington, Sanna Pederson and Eva Rieger. In addition, John Deathridge, Mike Ashman and David Cormack are thanked. Among the contributors are many other scholars whose names will also be familiar to readers of The Wagner Journal.