Simon Callow's Being Wagner

Working on Parsifal, both Levi [conductor] and Rubenstein [rehearsal pianist] preferred, they said, to look for the man in his work, rather than the work in the man.
--Simon Callow, Being Wagner (Vintage, 2017),

Wagner's operas, especially Parsifal and the Ring cycle, have given me more pleasure than any other composer's; they are gesmantkunstwerke like no other operas. It is clear what drove Wagner's success: determination and luck.  Wagner worked long and hard on his operas (for which he wrote the libretti as well as the music) and at one point he had five operas fully written but never performed and no money in the bank.  At which point King Ludwig of Bavaria died and immediately King Ludwig II became Wagner's patron, allowing him to start performing his operas and providing money for building a new theatre at Bayreuth in Bavaria. Callow captures Wagner's tempestuous life in 19th century Europe, a time of upheaval in music as well as politics (at one point Wagner was considered a revolutionary and  banned from Germany for eleven years.)

Wagner reminds me of some other artists, particularly Orson Welles in film and Balanchine in ballet.  Callow has written an excellent three-volume biography of Welles, who was as determined as Wagner, who changed the art of film but whose patron at RKO, George Schaefer, was fired in 1942 -- after Citizen Kane was released and The Magnificent Ambersons botched -- and Welles never again found a reliable patron. Balanchine was brought to America and supported for many years by Lincoln Kirstein, a dedicated fundraiser for what eventually became the New York City Ballet.  Balanchine established a school (The School of the American Ballet) and trained his dancers -- just as Wagner had trained a new generation of singers to perform his difficult and complex work -- and Balanchine was able to supervise the building of his own theatre at Lincoln Center, The New York State Theatre, to make his revolutionary ballets affordable and accessible.

Callow's biography of Wagner intelligently makes little attempt to convey the experience of the operas themselves, which can be heard on recordings but which are best experienced live.  In the Spring of next year the Metropolitan Opera is doing three complete cycles of the Ring; one can experience all four operas for $300.