Richard Wagner was the worst. I mean, the worst. In all likelihood, nobody is ever going to take the title of most horrible person ever to write renowned classical music away from this guy.
Its not just that he was venomously anti-Semitic, although that maintains pride of place among his various indiscretions. He was also an inconsiderate, self-aggrandizing womanizer who never repaid his debts. Its enough to make sitting through the four-and-a-half hours of Die Meistersinger von Nrnberg just that much more painful.
Too bad he wrote so much fantastic music. Otherwise, we could all comfortably ignore him.
Check out the gallery above for a selection of stories about Richard Wagner being the insufferable, rude, prejudiced, entitled, egomaniacal prat that he was.
(Note: Information in this slideshow is taken from Robert Gutman's Richard Wagner: The Man, His Mind, and His Music, Oliver Hilmes's Cosima Wagner: The Lady of Bayreuth and Derek Watson's Liszt.)
