The Wagner Experience and its Meaning to Us by Paul Dawson-Bowling

Across three volumes, Paul Dawson-Bowling’s Wagner: The Complete Experience and Its Meaning to Us introduces, deepens and enriches the Wagner Experience for the newcomer and seasoned Wagnerian alike. Expounding in colourful style the stories, the sources and the lessons of Wagner’s great dramas, the author offers unusual insights into the man, his works and their meaning while grappling with the music’s almost occult power.

The book is the second edition of The Wagner Experience and Its Meaning to Us (Old Street Publishing), complete with many new insights and three newnew chapters unveiling Wagner’s rarely examined early operas Die Feen, Das Liebesverbot and Rienzi.

Before taking us through Wagner’s operas, Dawson-Bowling explores Wagner’s formative experiences, his aspirations and his mentality; also Wagner’s first wife Minna and her immense but unrecognised impact. This sets up lenses through which the reader may more accurately view not only Wagner the man but, more importantly, his stage works since, as Dawson-Bowling insists, the best encounter with Wagner’s dramas is a direct one.

Uniquely drawing on a lifetime’s experience in General Medical Practice, the author brings us great wisdom, humanity and psychological understanding to his study on the life and work of Wagner with especial reference to the thought of Carl Jung.

Above all, this book draws out the vital lessons which Wagner’s extraordinary, didactic dramas can over us. It reveals their lessons as life-enhancing: capable of transforming our society, our lives and ourselves. There is no other book about Wagner quite like it.

Hardback, 3 volumes.