[x]

Like they say in the interviews, Wagner was a mythmaker, a thinker, a visionary, an Artist with a capital A (an ARTIST with all capitals, even), someone who transformed music. So the answer's going to be Wagner.

Was he really a better writer of operas than Verdi? It doesn't matter. Like Mark Twain is supposed to have said, “Wagner's music is better than it sounds."

There's a lot to be said for Verdi, but it's hard to go up against the myths that Wagner created -- about himself as much as about the Nibelungen or Tristan and Isolde.

[pluvmantelo]

Edgar Wilson ‘Bill’ Nye:
The peculiar characteristic of
classical music is that it is really
better than it sounds.
A stand-up line quoted in
1888.
Variant: Wagner’s music is
better than it sounds.
(Attested in an obituary)

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