I don't hear any gratuitous ego in Wagner's music. He was committed to telling a story using the most effective means he could find. How is there any more ego in the start of Tristan than there is in the start of Schubert's Unfinished? Both draw you into the start of a long journey. In the folk scene there are singers and storytellers who start every narrative with a gratuitous assertion of personality - the best of them, like Martin Carthy, take Wagner's approach and don't.

And in Wagner's social/political writings, his advocacy of vegetarianism and the rights of animals show a degree of tenderness and concern that Keith never showed towards anything in creation in his posts here, with their unmitigated bullying and hatred. It's obvious which of them came across better in print as someone you'd like to know personally and whose music you'd like to give a hearing.

The classical music scene has always been somewhat forgiving. Gesualdo had no problem getting his music published and reasonably widely known, despite disgusting his contemporaries with his criminality. Nicolas Gombert served a sentence in the galleys for fiddling with choirboys and picked up his very successful career regardless.