One hundred and fifty years ago this summer, Richard Wagner wanted to change the world.
Not only the musical world, but nationhood, political thought, even the idea of what it means to be human.
>>> World Cup Refereeing: VAR Interventions and Controversies Analyzed
The inaugural Bayreuth festival opened on 13 August 1876, with the first complete cycle of Der Ring des Nibelungen staged in Wagner's custom-built Bayreuth Festspielhaus in Bavaria.
The first audience included kings, emperors, aristocracy and politicians as well as Europe's musical and creative elites. Tchaikovsky, Grieg, Bruckner and Liszt were among them.
Wagner, who had been a revolutionary on the streets of Dresden in the 1840s, intended the Ring's four operas to usher in a new world.
One redeemed and made wise by this epic story of power, love, redemption, betrayal and renewal.
The titanic impact of Wagner is almost impossible to grasp today.
Stage design aside, having the orchestra entirely hidden in the pit and darkening the auditorium were two of his innovations at Bayreuth.
His legacies are felt across the arts.
From the way Wagnerism gripped German philosophers and Paris's painters and poets in the 19th century, to the seismic changes he wreaked in cultural politics, and the toxicity of the antisemitic bearers of the Wagnerian flame after his death in 1883.
But a thought experiment: is it possible to imagine a world in which Wagner never existed?
What would happen if Bayreuth disappeared with the same magical flourish that made it; what might have happened to music and culture in his absence?
