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Barry Millington draws on recent scholarship to throw new light on the issues and controversies surrounding the life of composer Richard Wagner. The composer of the Ring Cycle has always polarised opinion, having a reputation variously as an egoist, philanderer, wife-stealer and anti-Semite, but also as one of the greatest artists of all time.  Millington, one of the world’s leading Wagner scholars, talks to literary journalist and broadcaster David Freeman about the composer’s relationships with his wife, Cosima, and with his mistress, Mathilde Wesendonck. He looks at Wagner’s fetish for wearing silks and satins, his self-promotion, his anti-Semitism and at his legacy. And he explains why he believes the Ring Cycle is one of the enduring pillars of Western civilisation. Excerpts from the Ring Cycle will intersperse the conversation.

Millington is chief music critic for the London Evening Standard and editor of The Wagner Journal. He has written or co-edited seven books on Wagner.