Despite Bard’s Best Efforts, Wagner Resists Illumination

“[A]s a musician and a man, Wagner cast a spell, and that was as palpable at [the Bard Music Festival], if sometimes as oppressive, as the heavy rain clouds overhead. And however much the festival was designed to dispel the Wagnerian clouds and show you how he did it, revealing the mechanism was never enough. The better you know this master musician, the more mysterious he seems.”