Feast of the Gods: David Conway struggles to digest a disparate offering on the ‘Ring’

DiGaetani writes: ‘During the thirty years after World War II Richard Wagner had a very tainted name, especially in America, because Hitler used Wagner’s tragic anti-semitism in the cause of Nazism.’ This statement invites so many questions (to deal with which might take up a whole issue of the journal), and manifests so bizarre a use of the word ‘tragic’ (from one who is a Professor of English at Hofstra University), that one is induced seriously to question the credentials of the editor as a suitable Ringmaster to introduce the various acts, some of great value, some alas rather less so, that the book contains. DiGaetani is not the only contributor to suggest that the last fifty years or so are just a horrible dream, which as it evaporates leaves us somehow free simply to enjoy Wagner’s beautiful music, rid of these distasteful associations.