In 1963, the year of Richard Wagner's 150th birthday, Ludwig Marcuse shocked Wagnerians with his polemical biography. It is his subjectivity that keeps Marcuse's biographies from being overtaken by research or becoming outdated. Written in a style that is always vivid, concrete, and illustrative, with passages that shine with a sublime, subtle malice. The biography illustrates what many find difficult to accept: that one can appreciate a significant work without holding its creator in the slightest regard. Marcuse always writes the history of ideas; he always describes both eras: the one in which they are set and the one in which they were written.