The Wagner Journal, July 2026: Bach, Beethoven, Bayreuth and the Afterlives of Wagner

The July 2026 issue of The Wagner Journal — Volume 20, Number 2 — is out, and offers a wide-ranging set of perspectives on Wagner: his musical inheritance, his influence on later literature and thought, the meanings attached to Bayreuth, and the documentary traces left by those who worked in his orbit.

Roger Allen’s “‘Zum Raum wird hier die Zeit’: Richard Wagner and Johann Sebastian Bach”, is a study that places Wagner in dialogue with Bach and with one of the most resonant phrases in Parsifal. The article explores influence in the narrow sense, but also a larger question of musical time, sacred space and historical consciousness.

Adeline Heck turns to a more unsettling Wagnerian afterlife in “Decadent Lustmord: Fin-de-Siècle Parodies of Tristan und Isolde by Gabriele d’Annunzio and Joséphin Péladan”. Here Tristan is approached through the decadent imagination of the fin de siècle, where Wagner’s drama of desire, death and transfiguration could be reworked in darker, more parodic and erotically charged forms.

In “‘Clairvoyance Psychologique’: Thomas Mann’s 1933 Wagner Lecture and its Consequences”, Anja-Rosa Thöming revisits Mann’s famous and controversial engagement with Wagner at a moment of profound political and cultural crisis.

Bayreuth itself is the subject of Edward A. Bortnichak and Paula M. Bortnichak’s “Bayreuth at the Crossroads: Remembering, Forgetting and the Search for Meaning”.

The issue also includes Chris Walton’s “Beethoven’s Ninth under Wagner in 1872: The Annotated Score of Adolf Wallnöfer”. This article is being offered free by The Wagner Journal. It concerns a score of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony annotated by Adolf Wallnöfer, one of Wagner’s many young acolytes, during rehearsals for the performance conducted by Wagner on 22 May 1872 at the Margravial Opera House in Bayreuth. That performance marked the laying of the foundation stone of the Bayreuth Festival Theatre.

In addition to Walton’s article, the complete annotated score is available to download free from The Wagner Journal website in four sections, corresponding to the four movements of Beethoven’s Ninth.

The July issue also contains reviews of recent Wagner performances: Siegfried at Covent Garden, Tristan und Isolde at the Metropolitan Opera and in Glasgow, Das Rheingold in Berlin, Parsifal in Dresden, Götterdämmerung in Milan, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg in Stuttgart, and Cosima, a play staged in Dublin. The books section includes a review of Jeffrey Swann’s The Music of the ‘Ring’: A Comprehensive Study of the Leitmotives and How they are Used in ‘Der Ring des Nibelungen’.

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About The Wagner Journal

Established in 2007, The Wagner Journal is the world’s leading periodical devoted exclusively to Wagner studies. Combining top-quality writing and high production values, the journal is required reading for anyone concerned with the Wagner phenomenon historically or in performance today. It is edited by Barry Millington.

One of the finest monuments in sound ever to have been raised to the everlasting glory of music. (Claude Debussy on Parsifal)

"The thing about Wagner is that there can be no true success in any production of his operas, only degrees of failure. There is so much in these bloody pieces, all you can do is try to live up to them." (Keith Warner, The Guardian)

"I have never come across an audience with so much hatred, so much anger, such a thirst for revenge. They take everything personally. It makes you a little bit scared, and it's really quite terrifying." (Lance Ryan on the audiences at Bayreuth)

"People sometimes complain that Wagner operas are too long, that they get stiff and sore about 10.30 because they have rushed in to hear one of his works straight from work and are not properly prepared for listening to his music. The audience, as much as the artists, must be prepared for a performance."
(Benjamin Britten to Alan Blyth, Gramophone)

"I was bowled over. It was the year after Wieland Wagner had died; to be able to see his productions was a total knock-out. These bare stagings, where everything was done with lighting. The light changed with the music, and the shadows and patterns seemed as archetypal as the music itself. Nobody had done that on the stage before. I thought it was extraordinary and wonderful."
(Patrick Carnegy to The Guardian)

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