Say What?

In a piece examining whether one should hold and judge separately the artist as a man from his created works, Los Angeles Times classical music critic Mark Swed had this to say about the difficult case of Richard Wagner:

I believe we lose much in separating the artist from the art. Wagner the man is all over his operas, and that is what makes his operas universal.

Quite apart from the demonstrable fact that in the case of transcendent genius such as Wagner's it's never the case that "the man is all over" his created works,* how Mr. Swed comes to the conclusion that that's what makes Wagner's operas universal is beyond our capacity to understand as just a moment's reflection would expose the utter absurdity of such a conclusion.

We might suggest to Mr. Swed that he rethink that conclusion, and while he's at it, rethink as well a number of other ill-informed statements concerning Wagner that pepper this article.

* Or as T.S. Eliot put it, "[T]he more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates."