L’être collectif du peuple à l’épreuve du projet d’un théâtre national populaire de Wagner

The work of Richard Wagner – musical, poetic, political – has not ceased to provoke bitter controversy. It is to a lesser-known aspect of the "revolutionary" Richard Wagner that we consider here: the creation of a sublimated collective being associating the People and the Art through its project of "national popular theatre". Through a policy science approach, that is rarely applied to him, the Wagnerian project of national popular theatre (NPT) throws a crude light on any project of cultural policy. The sophisticated theorization, then the institutionalization of what the NPT must be, a decisive instrument of cultural democratization, is emblematic of a deceptive structure that characterizes cultural policy continuously. At the end of his life, Wagner saw his project realized, but completely returned. It becomes the most exclusive cultural institution in the world, which basically undermines the consistency of its representations of art, people and their relationship.