> Although to be fair, unlike Nietzsche, Wagner really was repulsively
> anti-semitic, and it was deeply connected to his choice of theme.
Yes, he certainly was, but that was only part of his repulsive personal qualities.
> And yet the Ring Cycle is still a piece of genius.
I sometimes think it is the greatest work of art in Western history. (But then I quickly come to my senses. :-) ) Wagner is one of the clearest pieces of evidence for the theory that works of art, especially music, come from somewhere else into the human world through the artist, seemingly untouched by whatever faults she or he may have. It seems that he somehow had to be a complete rat as a private person in order to produce the work he accomplished.
Beethoven was another example of a magnificent composer who was not that nice a person (though he was certainly superior to Wagner in his politics), as was Mozart -- who would have gone completely nuts and bankrupt charging clothes if he had lived in the era of credit cards. OTOH, Bach, Haydn, Brahms, and Mahler were apparently pretty OK in their private lives.
In any case, Plato was certainly onto something with his observation that artists can create great art with no relationship at all to morality.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ A sympathetic Scot summed it all up very neatly in the remark, 'You should make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and folk-dancing.' -- Sir Arnold Bax