Photo Gallery The Mad Genius
An 1877 photograph of Richard Wagner: The composer still casts a dark shadow today. Music and the Holocaust come together in that shadow: one of the most beautiful things created by man, and one of the worst things human beings have done. Wagner, the mad genius, was more than a composer. He also influenced Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich, even though he was already dead when the 12-year-old Hitler heard his music live for the first time when he attended a production of "Lohengrin" in the Austrian city of Linz in 1901.
Here, Wagner is pictured with his second wife Cosima, the daughter of Austrian-Hungarian composer Franz Liszt. Cosima was just one symbol of the many contradictions in Wagner's life. She was the wife of a director who often worked with Wagner. After fathering a child with Cosima, Wagner eventually issued a public aplogy and married her.
Even though Richard Wagner died before Hitler's rise to power, the Wagner family, through its famous festival of the composer's operas in Bayreuth, Germany, eventually established close ties with the dictator. Wagner's daughter-in-law Winifred Wagner (pictured here) often invited the future German dictator to the festival. When he was in prison writing "Mein Kampf," she even sent him ink, pencils and erasers.
Here, Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan, the then director of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (right), is pictured with the grandsons of Richard Wagner, Wolfgang (left) and Wieland (right), after attending a "Parsifal" performance at Bayreuth in 1960.
Here, Hitler can be seen visiting the Wagners' home in Bayreuth in 1938. In this picture, he is shown with Winifred. The Wagner heirs have tacitly agreed that Winifred will carry the Nazi burden, so as to draw attention away from the others. To this day, historians accuse the Wagners of withholding documents from those who study the Hitler years.
The specter of Hitler briefly returned to Bayreuth in 2012, when it was revealed that Russian bass-baritone Evgeny Nikitin (pictured here), who was to perform in "Lohengrin" at the festival, had a swastika tatooed on his chest.
Today, the Bayreuth Festival is led by Katharina Wagner (left), who is Wolfgang Wagner's daughter from his second marriage, and Eva Wagner-Pasquier (right) a daughter from his first marriage.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her husband Joachim Sauer are regular attendees of the Bayreuth Festival, the country's most important social event.
Here, the Festspielhaus where the operas are staged can be seen atop the Grünen Hügel, or Green Hill.
Prior to his death in 2008, Wolfgang Wagner is pictured here together with his daughter Katharina.
Wagner's operas remain some of the most important contributions to the genre of music and theater. Productions are staged each year around the world. This photo shows a 2007 staging of "Das Rheingold" at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York.
German conductor Christian Thielemann staged Wagner's "The Flying Dutchman" at the most recent Bayreuth Festival.
Jonathan Livny is the head of the Israeli Wagner Society. His father, a Jew living in Germany, emigrated to Palestine. He was the only member of his family to survive. By founding the Israeli Wagner Society, he wanted "to break the last symbol of hatred of Germans". For his views, he says he has been spat at and received threatening phone calls. "The more they threaten me," he says, "the more I want there to be a concert. The music isn't anti-Semitic."
A 2010 staging of "Lohengrin" at the Bayreuth Festival.
