Il conflitto del tragico: Nietzsche e Wagner, musica e filosofia

The article analyzes the complex relationship between Friedrich Nietzsche and Richard Wagner as one of the decisive moments in European culture between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Through the evolution of their relationship — from the young Nietzsche’s initial enthusiasm for the Wagnerian project of musical drama to the subsequent philosophical break — the main tensions of European modernity emerge: the conflict between art and life, tragedy and redemption, the Dionysian and nihilism. The text explores Wagner’s role in the refoundation of modern aesthetics, highlighting the centrality of myth, music, and the Gesamtkunstwerk, and examines Nietzsche’s critique of decadence, Schopenhauerian pessimism, and the sacralization of art. Through the comparison between the two thinkers, the article shows how Wagner and Nietzsche represent two different responses to the spiritual crisis of modernity: on the one hand, the search for an aesthetic-metaphysical redemption; on the other, the tragic affirmation of life and the creation of new values. The relationship between music, philosophy, and European culture is thus interpreted as one of the fundamental cores of the birth of contemporary sensibility.