Richard Wagner#
Summary#
Nietzsche presents Wagner as both a representative of the German soul and a European phenomenon who transcends national boundaries. He describes Wagner’s Mastersingers overture as magnificent but heavy latter-day art, simultaneously ancient and modern, pompous yet roguish, embodying a German potency that hides itself under refinements of decadence. While counting Wagner among the great synthesizers preparing the European of the future alongside Napoleon, Goethe, and Beethoven, Nietzsche criticizes Wagner’s later turn toward religious themes, seeing in Parsifal a preaching of the way to Rome and the artistic embodiment of the religious neurosis that fascinated Schopenhauer.