 There is an aspect of Wagner that we haven't discussed yet, that is to say this morning we heard quite correctly of Wagner creating this work as a critique of capitalist society, and I think Michael made a very persuasive case that there is an ecological dimension to important aspects of this work, but we must not forget that when Wagner became a critic of capitalism and a bourgeois life he attacked it in the name of a certain kind of primitivism and attacked it in the name of a cult of unreason and proposed to put in its place values and symbols that are may not necessarily be the ones that we would want to live by. I mean I'm not speaking here about the question of Wagner and prejudice and the Jews and all that, but leaving all that aside just, you know, his fanatical belief in myth, his fanatical belief in origins, his fanatical belief in archaism, his fanatical belief in the primitive, this was something that you know bourgeois society already in his time, but later in the early 20th century a lot of German culture they all rebelled against that and what we have to ask ourselves is when we offer a critique of capitalist life or bourgeois life or consumer life shouldn't we do it rather in the name of a humane ideal of reason and not in the name of these turgid little creatures wandering around with their esoteric symbols that appeal only to the people who can understand them etc. etc. There's something dangerous about those. I fundamentally agree, but not completely. I was also thinking when I first heard about this conference that if I were to think about current political and cultural crisis Wagner is the very last person I would go to for advice what to do today and moreover Wagner of the Ring is the very last Wagner kind of Wagner I would find more wisdom in Parsifal and almost all but not all of the Meistersinger than in the Ring. I think Wagner of the Ring is the most radical most extreme glorification of one of the myths that have done tremendous harm in modernity, the myth of revolution and so I this is the part where I probably depart a little bit from from you. He wants to replace the rule of Wotan with the rule of love that we are returning to this to this subject. This is this is the ultimate proposal. The new humans Siegfried and Brünnhilde are there to replace Wotan, to replace the rule of laws engraved on Wotan's spear. You know love is a wonderful virtue maybe Paul is right that it is the greatest virtue of them all, but it is not the only virtue. We we need other virtues too and one of them is called justice and especially when you want to think about society as a whole love is probably not the virtue you would reach for. You know love is very good in regulating or directing relations between individuals. It's wonderful in keeping families together but the society as a whole should not be kept together by love. It should be it should be kept together by law and I would much rather live in the in the world ruled by Wotan than the world ruled by Siegfried and Brünnhilde. Wagner did not stop with the Ring. The Ring in its essentials in its ideological impact is the work of the mid 19th century. By 1850 1852 the Ring is set. It is only the music which remains to be written. I agree with your music is tremendously important but the ideological significance of the Ring is stopped in 1852 but Wagner went further. Something happened to him in 1854. He read for the first time Schopenhauer and he read it at the moment when he for the first time stops believing in revolution. You know until about early 54 he still hopes that there will be your pan-European revolution which will completely change everything. He now is disappointed and of course Schopenhauer comes extremely handy as an explanation for his disappointment. He creates Tristan on his own. And suddenly it turns out that this love which he was glorifying in the Ring and which was supposed to provide the glue for the society the basis on which to build a new society is not something on which you can build a society. I mean the kind of picture of love that Tristan is presenting is it's an extremely cruel diet. Problematic, cruel, nihilistic and so on. So this is of course another very great work. I think much greater than the Ring but he is left at this point with the question so what will I do with my social vision? And I think the Meisterzinger is an attempt to save, to salvage something of this optimism of the Ring with the wisdom gained in the process of writing Tristan. And I think he has very important things to say in the Meisterzinger. There is a certain vision of necessity of combining tradition with innovation. He understands that innovation without rooting in the tradition is completely sterile avant-gardeism and he understands that tradition which is not enliven with innovation is sterile too. Unfortunately in the last scene he destroys it all by creating a vision of very frightening post-political politics. Maybe that last scene is prophetic that unfortunately even with all the fantastic awareness that you have going on through Meisterzinger at the end it can all be spoiled by cultural totalitarianism and maybe that is an interesting legacy that he leaves behind. That terrible last scene is actually very real particularly today. So in that respect I think it's not necessarily you can today look at the work in that way. It's a prophetic piece. It is undoubtedly prophetic but he likes it. He likes it. He likes it. If he didn't like it I would like it better. We have the possibility in modern times to thankfully not put on the works with the original sets and the original costumes we can have a point of view in restaging them in speaking to an audience and putting the work through a new lens, the lens of the 21st century is possible to cope with that scene in that light but it depends on the production. But I think it's interesting that that so-called accident of the last act of Meisterzinger is actually so painfully real.