News
31.07.2026
The Good, the Bad & the Ego
What happens when a character from Richard Wagner’s opera suddenly questions her creator?
*The Good, the Bad & the Ego* portrays Richard Wagner as an ambivalent visionary: overwhelming music, unsettling ideas, an oversized ego – and a myth that lives on to this day.
This four-part ARD documentary series combines documentary interviews with an animated heroine: Brünnhilde awakens in an artificially created Wagnerian world and begins to question the man who created her. Her journey takes her through fascination and resistance, genius and megalomania, myth and the present day.
The series takes viewers into a Wagnerian cosmos that extends far beyond opera and music history. It explores portrayals of women and power, anti-Semitism, Bayreuth, veneration and controversy – and the question of why Wagner still evokes love, anger, admiration and unease.
Renowned figures from the worlds of opera, music, academia and contemporary culture have their say: director Tobias Kratzer, conductors Simone Young and Pablo Heras-Casado, singers such as Michael Nagy, Camilla Nylund, Catherine Foster and Georg Zeppenfeld, musicologist Eva Rieger, and Franconian audience favourites Volker Heißmann and Martin Rassau. Their perspectives are not merely presented in a documentary style, but are reflected in and further explored through Brünnhilde’s story.
The series explores the women in Wagner’s life and in his operas: muses, victims, saviours, objects of projection – but also characters who need to be reinterpreted today. It examines the darker sides of Wagner: his anti-Semitism and his political legacy. And it takes us to Bayreuth: the place where Wagner is celebrated, interpreted, defended and criticised anew every year.
*The Good, the Bad & the Ego* is neither a traditional cultural documentary nor a Wagner seminar. The series presents Wagner as an event: visually striking, accessible, controversial, entertaining. An experimental documentary series interwoven with an animated feature film and a deliberately employed AI-generated visual world. The result is a modern, fantastical journey through Wagner’s larger-than-life ego – critical yet fascinated by the power of his music.
A film for everyone who loves Wagner. For everyone who finds Wagner challenging. And for everyone who wants to know why, 150 years after Bayreuth, this man still packs such a punch.
Link to the documentary:
https://www.ardmediathek.de/serie/the-good-the-bad-und-the-ego/staffel-1/Y3JpZDovL2JyLmRlL2Jyb2FkY2FzdFNlcmllcy9TMjAyNldPMDA1NjI4QTA/1?
*The Good, the Bad & the Ego* portrays Richard Wagner as an ambivalent visionary: overwhelming music, unsettling ideas, an oversized ego – and a myth that lives on to this day.
This four-part ARD documentary series combines documentary interviews with an animated heroine: Brünnhilde awakens in an artificially created Wagnerian world and begins to question the man who created her. Her journey takes her through fascination and resistance, genius and megalomania, myth and the present day.
The series takes viewers into a Wagnerian cosmos that extends far beyond opera and music history. It explores portrayals of women and power, anti-Semitism, Bayreuth, veneration and controversy – and the question of why Wagner still evokes love, anger, admiration and unease.
Renowned figures from the worlds of opera, music, academia and contemporary culture have their say: director Tobias Kratzer, conductors Simone Young and Pablo Heras-Casado, singers such as Michael Nagy, Camilla Nylund, Catherine Foster and Georg Zeppenfeld, musicologist Eva Rieger, and Franconian audience favourites Volker Heißmann and Martin Rassau. Their perspectives are not merely presented in a documentary style, but are reflected in and further explored through Brünnhilde’s story.
The series explores the women in Wagner’s life and in his operas: muses, victims, saviours, objects of projection – but also characters who need to be reinterpreted today. It examines the darker sides of Wagner: his anti-Semitism and his political legacy. And it takes us to Bayreuth: the place where Wagner is celebrated, interpreted, defended and criticised anew every year.
*The Good, the Bad & the Ego* is neither a traditional cultural documentary nor a Wagner seminar. The series presents Wagner as an event: visually striking, accessible, controversial, entertaining. An experimental documentary series interwoven with an animated feature film and a deliberately employed AI-generated visual world. The result is a modern, fantastical journey through Wagner’s larger-than-life ego – critical yet fascinated by the power of his music.
A film for everyone who loves Wagner. For everyone who finds Wagner challenging. And for everyone who wants to know why, 150 years after Bayreuth, this man still packs such a punch.
Link to the documentary:
https://www.ardmediathek.de/serie/the-good-the-bad-und-the-ego/staffel-1/Y3JpZDovL2JyLmRlL2Jyb2FkY2FzdFNlcmllcy9TMjAyNldPMDA1NjI4QTA/1?