Organizers of Ring Festival LA contend that the festival honors Wagner’s music, not the man. According to Richard Wagner himself, the two are inseparable:
“I cannot consider those who pretend to love me as artist, yet deem themselves bound to deny me their sympathy as man. . . . The severance of the artist from the man is as brainless an attempt as the divorce of soul from body and . . . never was an artist loved nor his art comprehended, unless he was also loved – at least unwittingly – as man.”
Richard Wagner
“A Communication to My Friends”
Los Angeles Opera is patterning Ring Festival LA after the Bayreuth Festival:
“The idea of the festival was realized as the Bayreuth Festival, which was very soon to have a propaganda effect all over Germany. Added to this were Wagner Societies springing up everywhere. . . . From the beginning of the festival, then, anti-Semitism and racism were among the ingredients of the Bayreuth opera undertaking, whether implicit or explicit. Wagner’s anti-Semitism was closely connected to this.”
Gottfried Wagner
Great-Grandson of Richard Wagner
“Twilight of the Wagners: The Unveiling of a Family’s Legacy”
Wagner’s view on Hitler’s “Final Solution” – the Nazi plan to exterminate the Jews:
“Richard is in favor of expelling them [Jews] entirely. We laugh to think that it really seems as if his article on the Jews marked the beginning of this struggle.”
Cosima Wagner, Richard Wagner’s wife
“Diaries”
