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Following his allegorical interpretation of Wagner's
Ring of the Nibelung, this installment of Heise's Wagner project examines his mature music-dramas
Tristan and Isolde, The Mastersingers of Nuremberg and
Parsifal in light of their relationship to the
Ring as understood through Heise's allegorical reading.
About the author
Paul Brian Heise has studied the works of Richard Wagner since 1971. While pursuing graduate studies in anthropology at Southern Illinois University, he developed an argument that Wagner's works could be understood as an allegory and withdrew from formal studies to devote his life to discovering and sharing his wholesale reassessment of the meaning of Wagner's dramas and their music. Heise has published extensively on Wagner, including
The Wound That Will Never Heal: An Allegorical Interpretation of Richard Wagner's The Ring of the Nibelung (Academica Press, 2021), and, with the support of the late British philosopher Sir Roger Scruton, the website www.wagnerheim.com, an online compendium of Heise's thoughts about Wagner.
