The task of the literary translator is usually framed around the notion of ‘fidelity’ to the source text. Whatever the translator is trying to be faithful to (which is another question), any betrayal of the original, according to this logic, is deemed a failure. Or, as the Italian motto has it, traduttore traditore. The translator Mark Pol…[Read more]

Wagner’s Parsifal has the curious honour of being the subject of the final book by Roger Scruton, philosopher, composer, novelist, doyen of English conservatism and one of the most prolific public intellectuals in the UK of the last fifty years, who died in January 2020. Not long before, Scruton sent his publisher, Allen Lane, the manuscript of W…[Read more]

Review article on the first collected edition of Wagner’s musical works, the Richard Wagner Sämtliche Werke (1970-[vols. still forthcoming at the time of review]). The review may be read in conjunction with Coleman, “Sämtliche Werke”, in _The Cambridge Wagner Encyclopedia_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 511-513.

The anniversary commemoration of great artistic figures would be incomplete without a survey of the scholarly landscape. So in the year of Richard Wagner’s bicentenary, the publication of new books shows no sign of abating, and nor should it, when there is still so much to be said about this most controversial of composers. But many of the l…[Read more]