Wagner Brought to Book: Wagner’s fictionalised death in Venice and a study of Wagner and 19th-century realist fiction reveal novel aspects of the composer’s life, works and death, suggests Heath Lees

Reviews of John W. Barker, Wagner and Venice Fictionalized: Variations on a Theme (University of Rochester Press, 2012); Hugh Ridley, Wagner and the Novel. Wagner’s Operas and the European Realist Novel: An Exploration of Genre (Rodopi, 2012).

July 2013, Volume 7, Number 2, 77–80.

The first of these books displays a fictionalised Wagner, while the second conjures up the notion of Wagnerised fiction. Common to both is the genre of the novel. John W. Barker provides a motley parade of writings that brings a dead Wagner back to life, while Hugh Ridley fixes his eye on the genre itself, and explicitly avoids novels ‘in which Wagner and/or his works play a role’ (p. 9). Barker, true to his name, offers us a ringside seat, while Ridley beckons us to the philosopher’s chair.