The Case of Wagner is Friedrich Nietzsche’s late polemic against the composer he had once revered as the hope of German culture. Once Wagner’s friend and champion, Nietzsche here turns sharply critical, attacking what he sees as the decadence, theatricality, and sickness embodied in Wagner’s art.
Written with brilliant wit and venom, the essay is both a settling of personal accounts and a wider diagnosis of the cultural ills Nietzsche associated with Wagnerism. He sets the seductive Wagner against the clarity he prized in figures like Bizet. As one of the most provocative documents in the literature on music, it remains essential to understanding both Nietzsche and the Wagner controversy.