Richard Wagner is still with us and it is surprising that he is. For some decades after his death, the theatre developed along lines suggested by his theatrical and dramatic practice and theory, but as the forms and functions of theatre changed in the early decades of the twentieth century, the aesthetic legitimacy of his work was challenged. Not only did the romantic–realistic style in which the music-dramas were conceived become archaic, but the heroic atmosphere and ethos of his work grew increasingly suspect. The notion of heroism as a formative agent in public life, always a questionable assumption, has been more discredited in the latter half of the twentieth century than perhaps at any other time in history. The aphorism of Brecht's Galileo, “Unhappy the land where heroes are needed,” must surely stand as one of our defining mottoes since World War II. But Wagner, for all his championing of the hero, did not disappear. A few years after the defeat of Germany, the music-dramas were reinstated in the international and German operatic repertoire, and although subsequent generations have continued to contest their centrality to German culture, they are as popular as they have ever been. Even smaller European opera-houses now regularly stage the Ring and at the Bayreuth Festival applications for tickets, we are told, outweigh availability by a factor of about eight to one. Wagner, it appears, will be with us for several decades to come, probably longer.