Mark Swed: On Tuesday, Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich called for Los Angeles Opera -- which is scheduled to mount Wagner's four-opera "Ring" cycle next spring as well as coordinate a citywide festival on the "Ring" -- to "delete the focus on Wagner." He asks this on the grounds that Wagner was a racist and anti-Semite whose music Hitler enjoyed and employed to his own ends. In addition to Wagner, the supervisor suggests we turn to, among others, Mendelssohn, Schubert and Schumann, great composers who never properly mastered opera. Oy vey! I hardly know where to begin.
