Bob Chen wrote:

>Kershaw also discusses Hitler's amateurish music criticism and his devotion
>to "the Wagner Cult" (his words, not mine).  "Adolf's passion for Wagner ...
>knew no bounds," he writes.  In Vienna, Hitler and Kubizek saw Lohengrin,
>"which remained Hitler's favourite," 10 times.  "For him," Kubizek later
>wrote, "a second-rate Wagner was a hundred times better than a first-class
>Verdi."

A few months ago the Mahler-List discussed a NYT article that touched on
this subject.  It seems that Hitler attended a Wagner opera and was much
moved by it.  The conductor? Gustav Mahler.  I can't find the details in my
data dumpster of a filing system, but a search of the Mahler-List archives
at

   http://listserv.uh.edu/archives/mahler-list.html

might be worth your while.

Mitch Friedfeld