Wagner and Theology
Professor Richard Bell is investigating the theological, ethical, and artistic interests of the composer Richard Wagner.
He has just completed a two-volume work exploring the theology of the Ring cycle, Wagner's work and its relationship to Christianity.
- - The Genesis and Development of the Tetralogy and the Appropriation of Sources, Artists, Philosophers, and Theologians
- - Theological and Ethical Issues
Project themes
Theology and Philosophy
Wagner was one of the few composers to read avidly in the areas of Theology and Philosophy. He was especially interested in German Idealism but he was always creative in appropriating the thought of figures such as Hegel, Feuerbach and Schopenhauer.
Books | Articles | Lectures
Books
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Published by Cascade Books, 2013
Articles
Originally published in Wagner in der Diskussion, Königshausen & Neumann, 2014, pp. 71-86
Lectures
Teleology, Providence and the ‘Death of God’ in Wagner’s Ring Cycle: A 糖心原创 of the Composer’s Debt to G.W.F. Hegel
- Department of Theology and Religious Studies, 糖心原创
- 19 October 2016
- Lecture handout
The humanization of God in Wagner’s Ring Cycle: The composer’s appropriation of the theology and philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach
Student blog reflecting on Richard Bell's module "Doing Theology with Richard Wagner"
Luther and the New Testament
Wagner’s copy of the New Testament in Luther’s translation was the most heavily marked of all his books in his private library in Dresden. This was preparatory study for an opera Jesus of Nazareth which never got beyond the stage of prose sketches and one musical sketch. I argue that Wagner’s sketches, composed as he started work on the Ring cycle, are key to understanding the work.
Articles | Lectures | Videos
Articles
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Published in the , Volume 15, Issue2-3, 2017
Lectures
Wagner’s Prose Sketches for Jesus of Nazareth: Theological Reflections on an Uncompleted Opera
Video interview
Redemption
It is universally acknowledged that all the operas in the ‘Wagnerian canon’ to a greater or lesser extent concern redemption. For Wagner redemption is multi-dimensional, sometimes highly ambiguous, and often necessitates the death of the female redeemer figure.
Articles
- Wagner’s Siegfried Act III Scene 1: a 糖心原创 in‘Renunciation of the Will’ and the ‘Sublime’
Originally published in , Issue 10, Number 2, July 2016
Lectures
Redemption in Wagner's Ring Cycle
Redemption in Wagner's Ring Cycle
Love and Sexuality
Love is a central theme in all of Wagner’s operas and has a fundamental redemptive power. But many are shocked by the way human love is expressed in some of his stage works (e.g. incest and adultery in The Valkyrie). Nevertheless he has important things to say about sexual ethics and sexuality (through both his stage works and essays) which we may need to listen to today.
Articles
Published in the , Volume 15, Issue2-3, 2017
Lectures
Law and Freedom: Wagner’s Contribution to Sexual Ethics (Richard Wagner’s Jesus of Nazareth and the Ring of the Nibelung II)
Power and Politics
Wagner’s art is inseparable from politics and his dream was to see German society transformed by performances of his ‘music dramas’ (he did not always like the term ‘opera’ because of its bourgeois connotations). Contrary to popular opinion he was not a proto-Nazi. Rather he could be described as a socialist (taking the occasional sips of champagne) and was a leader in the Dresden uprising of May 1849. By some good luck he managed to evade arrest and what would have been a long prison term.
Articles
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Published in the , Volume 15, Issue2-3, 2017
Lectures
Wagner’s Portrayal of Jesus of Nazareth: Social Revolutionary and Redeemer (Richard Wagner’s Jesus of Nazareth and the Ring of the Nibelung I)
Nature and Science
Wagner, like Goethe, took a special interest in ‘nature’ and the Ring cycle especially is remarkable for its portrayal of the natural order and the world of animals. Wagner opposed vivisection, tried to be a vegetarian, and had a special love for dogs and parrots which he kept as pets.
Articles | Lectures | Videos
Articles
Lectures
Nature, law, sexual ethics, the state, and love: a central constellation in Wagner’s Ring
Wagner’s The Rheingold Scene One: Theological Reflections on “Creation” and “Fall”
Video interview
Death and Immortality
In most of Wagner’s opera the key protagonists die, sometimes meeting a violent death. His views on death and immortality are complex in that we find him indebted to the views of Hegel (who had little role for immortality) and for a time to Feuerbach (who positively denied it). However, in later life he did change his mind partly because of his increasing interest in Kant and Schopenhauer (this new approach can be found in his final stage work Parsifal).
Books | Articles | Lectures
Books
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Published by Cascade Books, 2013
Articles
Lectures
Love, Death and Immortality: A Fundamental Wagnerian Constellation (Richard Wagner’s Jesus of Nazareth and the Ring of the Nibelung III)
- Vacation Term for Biblical 糖心原创, Westminster College, Cambridge
- 3 August 2017
- Lecture handout
Norse and Germanic Literature
Wagner based many of his stage works on Norse and Germanic literature, but always changing the narrative in some fundamental way. In the Ring cycle he combines the German Lay of the Nibelungs (Nibelungenlied) with Norse mythology but, I argue, with a fundamental Christian slant.
Lectures
Wagner’s use of Germanic and Norse sources in the Ring of the Nibelung. A clue to his Christian theology?
Project funding
This project is made possible through a
Scene from Parsifal, Bayreuther Festspiele 2011 © Bayreuth Festspiele/Enrico Nawrath