How Deep Is Your Love? (on operatic fan art) Lapham’s Quarterly, Fall 2017 Music Issue “Neuschwanstein, the unfinished masterpiece of Ludwig II, king of Bavaria from 1864 to 1886, was a thoroughly modern project, belonging not to medieval history but to neomedieval fairy-tale fantasy, and was built to serve a modern purpose: to manifest, relieve, and exalt Ludwig’s obsession with the works of the composer Richard Wagner. The king was perhaps the world’s greatest opera fan; his Neuschwanstein remains perhaps the world’s greatest work of fan art.” Image: Library of Congress Back to Essays & Stories