Wagner: beauty in the eye of the beholder

Loud. Cheap. Pretentious. What a young Gerard McBurney was told about Wagner's music. But neither parental disapproval nor the Wagnerians stopped him learning to love and cherish itIn my childhood, I knew almost nothing about Wagner. We listened to lots of music, but never his. From grownups, I gathered only that he was "a bad man" ("arrogant", apparently) who wrote operas that were loud, long, ugly, filled with caterwauling (those ridiculous horned helmets curiously associated with blaring orch...

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