Wagner and Barenboim

A year or so ago, I became embroiled with Daniel Barenboim (see here and here). I even appeared on a BBC program with him.

My argument at the time was with his pro-Pal ideology but he is also infamous for promoting Wagner's music which is for all intents and purposes publicly banned in Israel.

And now I found this bit:-

Whether or not there is any Jew-baiting subtext to be found in Wagner’s operas is much disputed by scholars, but there is no argument about his personal anti-Semitism, or Cosima’s. The Bayreuth circle was breeding mephitic ultranationalist ideology well before Hitler, notably through the “scientific” racist theories of another English immigrant, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who married Siegfried’s sister Eva.

Under the Third Reich, Bayreuth became a temple of National Socialist art, although the regime was not monolithic in this respect.

Barenboim's so cosy with Dick and Cosima; makes you want to pluck his strings.