How to Assassinate Wagner. The Mastersinger from Minsk by Morley Torgov
In Morley Torgov’s The Mastersinger from Minsk, Inspector Herman Preiss, a poor pianist but a great music lover, and his mistress, the cellist Helena Becker, are confronted with Richard Wagner, threatened with ruination on the first performance of his new opera, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, in Munich in 1868. Based on historical facts, Torgov’s fiction builds a strong case against Wagner, a highly divisive figure and a notorious anti-Semite, and re-opens the debate whether a work of art can be considered independently from the artistic genius who conceived it.