Good Art by Bad People - Background Reading for Wagner at Pacific Opera Victoria

Pacific Opera Victoria will present Richard Wagner’s five-hour epic opera Die Walküre in October 2023. Although the music transcends, approaching Wagner in 2023 means reckoning with Wagner's influentially anti-Semetic views and the legacy that they have had.

This list offers some strategies for engaging with and loving art that has been created by problematic and challenging creators.

Updated September 27, 2023
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Greater Victoria Public Library
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Black paper writing in a dark time
Cole, Teju 
Paper Book
A wide-ranging collection of essays from a celebrated master of the form. "Darkness is not empty," writes Teju Cole in Black Paper, a collection of essays that meditate on what it means to keep our humanity--and witness the humanity of others--in a time of darkness. Cole...
Fallen idols : twelve statues that made history
Von Tunzelmann, Alex
Paper Book
Monsters a fan's dilemma
Dederer, Claire, 1967- author. 
Paper Book
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK * NATIONAL BESTSELLER * A timely, passionate, provocative, blisteringly smart interrogation of how we make and experience art in the age of cancel culture, and of the link between genius and monstrosity. Can we love the work of controversial classic and...
Richard Wagner : the sorcerer of Bayreuth
Millington, Barry.
Paper Book
Richard Wagner is one of the most influential - and controversial - composers in the history of music. Over the course of his long career, he produced a stream of spellbinding works that challenged musical convention through their richness and experimentation, ultimately paving the way for...
Wagnerism art and politics in the shadow of music
Ross, Alex, 1968- author. 
Paper Book
For better or worse, Richard Wagner is the most widely influential figure in the history of music. Around 1900, the phenomenon known as Wagnerism saturated European and American culture. Such colossal creations as The Ring of the Nibelung, Tristan und Isolde, and Parsifal were models of formal...

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