Lawrence D. Mass

Featured in On The Future of Wagnerism

Alex Ross's Testimonial to the Life, Times and Art of Richard Wagner

For every window on Wagner we think we've already peered through, Ross has found more lenses and prisms through which to re-view them. At his best, Ross gives dimension to individuals, artworks and events, and captures their intersections with one another and the wider world of the past. But for all its evocation of the life and times of Wagner and the "artwork of the future" — Wagner's and that of his many disciples, there's little that looks to a salutary future for Wagnerism. Read Article

Larry Mass & Bill Goldstein in Conversation: On the Future of Wagnerism

March 10, 2022

Larry Mass and Bill Goldstein discuss the release of Larry Mass's more recent book, On the Future of Wagnerism: Art, Intoxication, Addiction, Codependence and Recovery, the sequel to his memoir, Confessions of a Jewish Wagnerite: Being Gay and Jewish in America. An open discussion on a range of subjects - from art, addiction and AIDS to Larry Kramer, Richard Wagner and the future. Additionally, Larry & Bill reflect on the recent loss of Mass's life partner, gay activist and writer Arnie Kantrowitz.

Lawrence D. Mass, M.D., is a co-founder of Gay Men's Health Crisis and was the first to write about AIDS in the press. He is the author of Homosexuality and Sexuality: Dialogues of the Sexual Revolution, Volume 1, and Homosexuality as Behavior and Identity: Dialogues of The Sexual Revolution, Volume 2. He is the author/editor of an anthology, We Must Love One Another Or Die: The Life and Legacies of Larry Kramer, and the author a memoir, Confessions of a Jewish Wagnerite: Being Gay and Jewish in America. The sequel to that memoir is the current collection, On the Future of Wagnerism: Art, Intoxication, Addiction, Codependence and Recovery. Mass has written widely on medicine, health and culture for mainstream and specialist publications. A recently retired physician specializing in addiction medicine, Mass resides in New York City.

Bill Goldstein reviews books and interviews authors for NBC's Weekend Today in New York, and was the founding editor of The New York Times books website. A graduate of the University of Chicago, Goldstein received a PhD in English from the City University of New York Graduate Center. He is writing a biography of Larry Kramer, to be published by Crown, and worked on the book as a 2019-2020 fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at The New York Public Library. His book, The World Broke in Two: Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence, E. M. Forster, and the Year that Changed Literature, was published in 2017.

Author/Activist

A recently retired physician specializing in addiction medicine, Mass resides in New York City. His life partner of 40 years, Arnie Kantrowitz died 1/21/22 from complications of COVID.

Also featured in On The Future of Wagnerism

Mass on Gays, Putin, Russia and the Metropolitan Opera

'Boo!' to the Metropolitan Opera
We know who they were, the ones who spoke out and resisted, who put their careers on the line to protest what was happening in Germany: Arturo Toscanini, Lauritz Melchior and Lotte Lehmann, to name a few. We also know the ones who didn't: Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, Herbert von Karajan, Wilhelm Furtwangler, Wieland and Wolfgang Wagner, to name a few. We also know those whose records were more equivocal: Richard Strauss and Kirsten Flagstad, to name a few. Although appreciation of artists who collaborated with the regime in varying degrees, actively or passively, has continued, just as appreciation of the works of Richard Wagner has continued notwithstanding his rabid anti-Semitism, the reputations of all these artists and composers are eternally tarnished and dogged. There is endless discussion and exhaustive intellectual acrobatics to separate their artistic achievements from their politics, prejudices and misdeeds, to exonerate and forgive them. The debates will never be resolved because they can't be. As Lady Macbeth puts it, what's done cannot be undone. Read Article