Richard Wagner's “My Life” is both a valuable document of the era and an eyewitness account. Attention to small details, descriptions of everyday details, characteristics of numerous contemporaries, from a neighbor blacksmith or baker from a parallel street to royalty and the greatest artists of their time, this makes it possible to see the life of 19th-century Europe in all its diversity. But, of course, the figure of the brilliant composer himself, whose work truly split the world in two, comes to the fore: into unconditional supporters of Wagner and his equally unconditional opponents. A personality of such gigantic proportions must inevitably arouse the most burning interest among both contemporaries and descendants. The new edition of Wagner’s memoirs is a real event in the cultural life of Russia. The translation of 1911–1912 has been re-edited and verified against the German original, with all defects and errors corrected as much as possible, and is also provided with detailed reference materials. All this makes this two-volume set interesting not only for music lovers, but even for historians.