The Consolations of History: Themes of Progress and Potential in Richard Wagner's GötterdämmerungAlexander H Shapiro.

The charge or, so it would seem, the plaudit of being a liberal - somehow, vaguely on account of Hegel - seems nonetheless to be the focus of Alexander H. Shapiro's book on, of all Wagner's works, I Götterdämmerung i . Shapiro has stern words for Wagner scholars who see Bakunin, Schopenhauer, or even both ( I mea culpa i ) in the final conflagration or, indeed, in anything leading up to it. "Was Hegel a liberal?". [Extracted from the article]