Wagner's immense self-belief wasn't just a personality trait; it was a functional necessity. It allowed him to bulldoze through financial and institutional barriers that would have stopped less assertive artists, ultimately enabling him to command the attention of royalty and build his own theatre.

Artists can become emotionally detached from their own work over time. Experiencing profound personal hardship, while devastating, can be a 'gift' that forces a reconnection with the visceral emotions their music explores. This allows them to see their art through the fans' eyes again, understanding the catharsis their audience experiences on a much deeper level.

Despite his later adoption by the Nazis, Wagner's personal politics were revolutionary and anti-authoritarian; he actively participated in the 1849 Dresden uprising. His work, particularly the Ring Cycle, is a critique of power, arguing that love is the only force that can triumph over worldly ruin—a fundamentally counter-cultural message.

Contrary to its later appropriation by fascists, the Ring Cycle's central message is a condemnation of the pursuit of power. The ring enslaves all who try to master it. The opera cycle culminates not in triumph but in the destruction of the gods' world, arguing that only love can endure against such ruin.

Unlike musical prodigies like Mozart, Wagner's early passion was for theatre as much as music, and he wasn't a maestro from a young age. His ambition was to combine drama and music, leading him to develop his compositional genius later in life, driven by a desire to control every aspect of operatic production.

Critics lament declining focus, yet popular video games like Baldur's Gate 3 demand 75+ hours of intense concentration. This is over five times longer than Wagner's entire Ring Cycle opera, a historical benchmark for sustained cultural attention, quantitatively refuting the attention decline narrative.

After hundreds of performances, an artist's emotional connection to a song naturally fades into muscle memory. However, that connection can be instantly restored by a single external event: seeing a fan in the crowd sobbing or having a deeply personal reaction. This external validation acts as a jolt, reminding the artist of the song's original power and re-infusing their performance with authentic emotion.

The concept of an addictive, corrupting ring of power, familiar from Tolkien, does not exist in ancient Norse or Germanic myths. Richard Wagner invented this idea for his Ring Cycle. It serves as a potent 19th-century allegory for the growing, destructive potential of modern technology.

Beyond his compositions, Wagner was a pioneer of modern theatrical production. He established the model for the celebrity conductor through his fundraising tours and, at his custom-built Bayreuth theatre, introduced innovations like curtains parting in the middle and leveraged new technology like the telegraph to create global media events.