Quotes About Wagner

Wagner is contrapuntal in a philosophical way as well as a musical way. What I mean by that is that every tendency has its opposite, and you see that in the man himself. He's a metaphysical hermaphrodite - he embraces hard and soft, masculine and feminine.

Can a great artist be mean-spirited, grasping, harsh to his family, violent in his emotions, vindictive in his hatreds, an all-purpose scoundrel? If our test cases are the likes of Wagner, Picasso, and, let me say, Dickens, the answer is a resounding yes.

I think 'Rheingold' has symbolic meaning of what happens in the world when you're running after the Rhine gold, after the gold. It doesn't end very well. It's kind of a reminder of the values of life, and I think 'The Ring,' in a way, is kind of a prediction of Wagner of what would happen in the world.

To play opera, to play Wagner, it's a great joy.

If I can't do an opera as well as most people, I won't do it at all. I don't want to touch Wagner because I think a lot of people do it a hell of a lot better than I could. I do the operas I think I can do, know something about.

Wagner had a terrific understanding of politics. In 1829, he was a Marxist revolutionary who wanted to bring down the establishment. He hated religion and churches, which he said enslaved people. But he later developed different views that put art at the centre of the life of the state.

C. Peter Wagner was the Donald McGavran professor of church growth at Fuller. He was considered to be the heir of McGavran, founder of the church growth movement. That movement essentially said, 'Whatever grows a church is good' and needs to be nurtured.

Bizarreness, like salt, gives flavor to existence. Without it, life would be as long and tedious as an opera by Wagner.

After reading and studying and getting in touch with the amount of information that I had while I was researching to play Pablo, it just reinforced the idea that I had that the war on drugs is a big flop.

Wagner had a mean soul, and it showed. He was evil in his anti-Semitism and his other racial attitudes. Therefore he could not be a genius, for all the burnish and glitter of his music.

Wagner has lovely moments but awful quarters of an hour.

I like Wagner's music better than anybody's. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without other people hearing what one says.

When I'm alone at home, I really prefer to listen to Wagner's orchestral music rather than any vocal music. I find it illuminating not to have to pay attention to voices in the recordings.

In Bach, Beethoven, and Wagner we admire principally the depth and energy of the human mind; in Mozart, the divine instinct.

I can't listen to that much Wagner. I start getting the urge to conquer Poland.

I just can't listen to any more Wagner, you know...I'm starting to get the urge to conquer Poland.

I just can't listen to any more Wagner, you know...I'm starting to get the urge to conquer Poland.

My wife was an opera singer, you know. She bellowed her way through Wagner as a Valkyrie. I married her and made her give up the theatre, to my eternal cost. She was to go on acting for myself alone. A performance at his own expense, lasting for more than twenty years, tends to wear out your spectator.

Wagner thought Rossini unserious; Rossini thought Wagner 'lacked sun'. Wagner also became the butt of a phrase Rossini had used down the years to describe musicians about whom he had certain reservations - "He has some beautiful moments but some bad quarters of an hour!

Everybody feels oppressed during a Wagner performance. That is part of the appeal.

What was infinitely more valuable to Wagner, and what excited his gratitude to even more superlative utterance, was the confidence which Liszt showed in his genius, and without which, it is no exaggeration to say, Wagner's greatest works would probably have remained unwritten.

I maintain that Western popular culture at its best is worthy of respect and should be cherished as much as the operas of Wagner.

Sometimes I have the feeling that you are not quite aware--and this honors you--of the historical greatness of your position, that you think too modestly about yourself. Everything you do is destined to be of historic significance. One day, your letters, your decisions, will belong to all mankind, like those of Wagner and Brahms.

Wagner and Strauss require great and glamorous singers