The View from the Pit: A new Wagner biography by a viola player and antiquarian is assessed by Nicholas Vazsonyi

Review of Ulrich Drüner, Richard Wagner: Die Inszenierung eines Lebens (Blessing Verlag, 2016).

March 2017, Volume 11, Number 1, 93–6.

Yet another Wagner biography, and 800 pages at that. Does the world really need more Wagner biographies and, if yes, does this one by musician and antiquarian Ulrich Drüner warrant the kind of time investment 800 pages requires? Let us start with its claims. Drüner makes much of the fact that he played viola in the Stuttgart orchestra pit for thirty years, including a significant amount of Wagner. Since retiring from his performing career, his acquaintance with Wagner has been enriched from the perspective of the antiquarian, which he has been since the 1990s. So, in two senses, Drüner is not your standard Wagner biographer. He comes to the subject matter with the thorough grounding not only of the musician but of the active performer. And his documentary, textual acquaintance has by the same token come in the first place through actual and tangible documents, rather than from the dead pages of previous scholarship.