Sturm und drang: Wagner in Israel. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)

* Since you encouraged letters on Daniel Barenboim's gutsy act to conduct Wagner in Israel, here is my reaction:

And the golden "Daniel in the Lion's Den" award goes to conductor Daniel Barenboim for extraordinary courage for presenting Richard Wagner's music at the Israel festival in Jerusalem. Thank you, Maestro.

That said, let's face it, Wagner was not a nice person. He betrayed his wife Minna countless times with wives of his most trusting friends, flirted with Socialism before holding hands with King Ludwig II of Bavaria and blamed every Jewish banker of Paris around 1840 for the most miserable time he ever had in his life. He was a busybody, a charmer, a liar, an opportunist and an egotistical whiner. Oh yes -- and at times, when he wasn't chased after by police or money collectors, he transformed his own opera librettos into sublime and electrifying musical dramas. He died in 1883, six years before the birth of Adolf Hitler, who took blatant advantage of Wagner's phantasm with Wotan as leader and ruler (although conveniently ignoring the fall of the gods in Gotterdammerung).

Why can't we judge Richard Wagner as we now judge George Wallace, the former governor of Alabama who in later years begged forgiveness for all the stupid things he said and did to black Americans?

I think it's time to stop the guilt-trip, especially for a new generation of Jews who should enjoy the stirring music dramas of Wagner unbiased. Or if you will, perhaps even receive it as a belated but deep-felt apology for his personal shortcomings and the crimes committed in his name.

Peter Clauss Laguna Woods, CA

* If I, as an opera-lover, deny myself the beauty of the Prelude to Tristan und Isolde, or of the Meistersinger quintet, because Wagner was anti-Semitic (or anti-Irish, anti-black, anti-gay, anti-Callas or anti-Tebaldi), who loses? Wagner or me? Wagner? I think not.