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Earlier this month, a modern version of "Tannhauser" was cancelled in Germany after the opening-night audience complained about new scenes showing Jews being executed and dying in Holocaust gas chambers. The Duesseldorf opera company insisted that it never aimed to hurt viewers' feelings. "This is not about mocking the victims, but mourning them," the director, Christoph Meyer, said. For many in Germany, and elsewhere, Wagner's ambivalence is summed up in the way works such as his opera cycle "Der Ring des Nibelungen"
-- with its famous "Ride of the Valkyries" -- can stir listeners into a frenzy. "Wagner means total ecstasy," Maria Ossowski, a German art reporter and Wagner fan, told Berlin's rbb Inforadio. "Yes, he was a terrible person, but his music was grandiose."
[Associated
Press;
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