And what should we make of this? A Jew, Daniel Barenboim, and his mostly Jewish Divan Orchestra will be performing Wagner’s music in Hitler’s theater in Berlin next year. The Jews really do own everything now.

In fairness to Barenboim, his orchestra does include a large number of Arabs. And he is a fine pianist. His interpretations of Beethovan’s middle sonatas are good. Better than, say, Ashkenazy’s.

Opera (okay, Wagner) is like a religion. It becomes part of your life and devotion to it can’t be helped.

As for the other things, remember that I am quite older than you and can draw upon years of experience and study. After twenty years at the grindstone, you too will have a well of resources to draw from.

There is a good deal of truth in the old adage: age and treachery will always overcome youth and enthusiasm.

The key to fruitful study is to ask the right questions, read the right books and not be afraid to come to iconoclastic conclusions. Add to this: think, think, think. Think about everything.

This is the “secret”. Do this and in twenty years (perhaps even in much less time) you will no longer be impressed by me. And as a fringe benefit you will also no longer be tempted with megalomania.

Share your secret with me. Combined with my megalomania, such a skill might enable me to take over the world, or at least Western Europe, or at least Andorra, before I die.

There are 64 drawings given in the sequence of the operas. My favorites are 18, 31, 33, 34, 47, and 56. A diverting exercise is to figure out the scene for each illustration.

For the advanced, here is a challenge: Give the opera, act, scene and circumstance of each of the following illustrations: 6, 14, 16, 30, 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 53, 55, and 58. The winner will receive a free one-year subscription to First Word.

I think an English-speaker watching the titles can almost get that much. In fact, when the Met production was broadcast for the first time on PBS in the 80s, I watched part of it with a classically-illiterate friend and he picked up a lot. Probably as much as I got in the first six or eight listenings.

More than the language, I think other propensities dominate here. It takes me several viewings even to “get” the simplest of operas. But that’s fine. It just prolongs the pleasure.

The book does suffer from a number of defects, but I’ll mention just two.  (1) The author’s chatty, “I’m just a regular guy who likes opera” style becomes cloying after a while. And his attempts at humor (which are many) are almost all abortive. (2) His approach to Wagner’s philosophy and political thought is conventional and uninteresting — typical PC stuff.