Few of the great composers can claim a body of work as influential and contentious as Richard Wagner; his life and compositions remain intertwined with the great upheavals of his time, and this often obscures a dispassionate critical assessment of his output. In Richard Wagner Raymond Furness provides a clear and balanced view of Wagner's great achievements, without neglecting the controversies in his life and art. Using the composer's wide-ranging engagement with mythology as his starting point, Furness explores Wagner's music and extensive literary output.