The Perfect Wagnerite (Esprios Classics)

The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring (originally published London 1898) is a philosophical commentary on Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen by the Irish writer George Bernard Shaw. Shaw offered it to those enthusiastic admirers of Wagner who were unable to follow his ideas and do not in the least understand the dilemma of Wotan. Shaw interprets the Ring in Marxian terms as an allegory of the collapse of capitalism from its internal contradictions. Musicologically his interpretation is noteworthy for its perception of the change in aesthetic direction beginning with the final scene of Siegfried in which he claimed that the cycle turns from Musikdrama back towards opera.