Richard Burton is perfectly cast as Richard Wagner in this magnum opus.
Gemma Craven has the best role of her career since "The Slipper and the Rose" as his long-suffering first wife driven half-mad by drug abuse and Wagner's coldness toward her; while Vanessa Redgrave is practically the image of Cosima.
Most of the famous names in the cast are relative cameos. At best, however long they appear, they play in support of Burton. But the stunt casting of the "Three Knights" (Olivier, Gielgud and Richardson) works, providing them with a surprising length of screen time, if not early on. When they finally step in this limelight they are hardly ever seen apart but they are not swallowed by the spectacle.
And it's a good-looking spectacle that barrels from Germany to Paris to Switzerland and Venice, celebrating the life of this difficult if extraordinarily gifted man (who entertained no doubts about his genius: like Sherlock Holmes he did not list humility among the virtues). And woven throughout the film is Wagner's glorious music.
Richard Pascoe and Ronald Pickup play just two of the people Wagner took up, used up and threw away when they were of no more use to him, or who left him when they themselves were fed up with the amazingly self-centered genius.
When you feel you've had just about enough of "Wagner" the man yourself, they play a snatch from one of his operas and for all the pity you have for the man's victims you feel it was worth devoting his life (and theirs) to his art. Wagner's music always seduces the viewer back.
I try never to confuse or conflate artists and the art. But despite liberties taken here (though not, I feel, as many as in "Amadeus") Wagner the man, producer of such lovely stage-work that can, more than any other operas, become an obsession, comes across as just plain awful.
Burton's performance, however, is calculated to soften Wagner's dreadfulness. An acclaimed stage actor whose power was often blunted in film, Burton was nominated for the Oscar seven times and in this performance one sees why. He's brilliant, playing Wagner at all ages.
Whatever Wagner did, his art came first. The often hateful human being doesn't contradict the beautiful, sensitive artist. A life like his deserves a huge, overwrought canvas like this daring, beautiful, interminable but ultimately rewarding melodrama (no other form could capture the man).
One highlight is Wagner's rivalry in Paris with Meyerbeer (Vernon Dobtcheff).
Long, yes; but for someone who loves Wagner's scores, it is a worthwhile investment as we get a sense of the master behind the music. And for anyone who doesn't know Wagner, this might get you hooked.
So often artists are presented as tortured. They may also be megalomaniacal mental-torturers. But their work may beautiful for all that.
