“Of all the bête, clumsy, blundering, boggling, baboon-blooded stuff I ever saw on a human stage, … and of all the affected, sapless, soulless, beginningless, endless, topless, bottomless, topsiturviest, tongs and boniest doggerel of sounds I ever endured the deadliness of, that eternity of nothing was the deadliest, so far as the sound went. I never was so relieved, so far as I can remember in my life, by the stopping of any sound – not excepting railway whistles – as I was by the cessation of the cobbler’s bellowing.”

– John Ruskin on “Die Meistersinger”

“For me Wagner is impossible… he talks without ever stopping. One just can’t talk all the time.”

– Robert Schumann

“One can’t judge Wagner’s opera ‘Lohengrin’ after a first hearing, and I certainly don’t intend hearing it a second time.”

– Gioachino Rossini

“I love Wagner. But the music I prefer is that of a cat hung up by its tail outside a window and trying to stick to the panes of glass with its claws.”

– Charles Baudelaire

“I like Wagner’s music better than any other music. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without people hearing what one says. That is a great advantage.”

– Oscar Wilde

“Is Wagner a human being at all? Is he not rather a disease? He contaminates everything he touches – he has made music sick. I postulate this viewpoint: Wagner’s art is diseased.”

– Friedrich Nietzsche

“Every time I listen to Wagner, I get the urge to invade Poland.”

– Woody Allen

“I have witnessed and greatly enjoyed the first act of everything whichWagner created, but the effect on me has always been so powerful that one act was quite sufficient; whenever I have witnessed two acts I have gone away physically exhausted; and whenever I have ventured an entire opera the result has been the next thing to suicide.”

– Mark Twain

“Wagner’s music is better than it sounds.”

– Edgar Wilson “Bill” Nye

Happy Birthday, Richard Wagner (1813-1883). Tune in today to make what you will of his art, from 4 to 7 p.m. EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.