Everything in Wagner's work - the music, the acting, the staging - stemmed from the text. Everything served to interpret the text.

Wagner’s music is better than it sounds.

Wagner thought Rossini unserious; Rossini thought Wagner 'lacked sun'. Wagner also became the butt of a phrase Rossini had used down the years to describe musicians about whom he had certain reservations - "He has some beautiful moments but some bad quarters of an hour!

Is Wagner actually a man? Is he not rather a disease? Everything he touches falls ill; he has made music sick

Everything is beautiful, all that matters is to be able to interpret.

Christopher Knowles, Buechner, Heiner Mueller, Burroughs, Chekhov, Shakespeare - it's all one body of work.