Well over a century after Wagner's death, the man and his music are as controversial as ever. Praised for his profound insights into the workings of the human heart, he has also been condemned as a dangerous libertine, a proto-fascist and an arrogant bore. His vast four-part operatic Ring cycle has been elevated as one of the greatest achievements of western culture and dismissed as an unparalleled example of creative megalomania. This audiobook makes no attempt to gloss over the darker sides of Wagner's character, personally or artistically, but argues that the finer aspects of his vision transcend its flaws. It tells the story of an extraordinary life, and charts Wagner's development, from unpromising beginnings, into the creator of some of the most brilliantly innovatory and seductively beautiful music ever composed.

Stephen Johnson studied at the Northern School of Music, Manchester, at Leeds University under Alexander Goehr then at Manchester University. Since then he has written regularly for The Independent and The Guardian, and was Chief Music Critic of The Scotsman (19989). He has also broadcast frequently for BBC Radios 3 and 4, and for the BBC World Service, including a series of fourteen programmes about the music of Bruckner for the centenary of the composer's death (1996). He is the author of Bruckner Remembered (Faber, 1998), a contributor to The Cambridge Companion to Conducting (CUP, 2004), and a regular presenter for Radio 3's Discovering Music. In 2003 Stephen was voted Amazon.com Classical Music Writer of the Year. He has written biographies of both Mahler and Wagner for Naxos Books.