It is blithely said that Nietzsche was devoted for a while to Wagner, and then we go on to value the 'mature' work higher: but let us stop there - let's look at the 'Wagner Period' more closely.
Was it really so 'immature'?
Or was it not absolutely necessary?
AND DOES IT NOT RESONATE CONTINUALLY IN AN ETERNAL PRESENT WHICH WILL BE OURS THROUGHOUT THE AGES?
Had Nietzsche died at the same age as Keats, Shelly or even Byron, would we think him any less a philosopher?
I think not.

So I have attempted to look at this early Nietzsche who is important in his own right, and unjustly neglected.
I also reject the idea that the mature Nietzsche is more acceptable because he became anti-Wagnerian - and therefore against the 'offensive' Wagner; the force and formulas in the late book 'The Antichrist' are the most 'offensive' he ever wrote.
Let's face it, one reason for his break with Wagner was down to the latter's ability to be so easily offended: Wagner was not offensive ENOUGH for Nietzsche.
Nietzsche offended everything and everybody, including himself; through such radicalism he honed a philosophy which was based in all the ideas of the early Wagner Period [as I have tried to show], but was sharper, leaner, and more radical than anything heard before.

If Nietzsche was determined to break with himself, to break all the values, to break God on the wheel of the eternal recurrence, - how could he not fail to cast aside Wagner?

The Death of God
The Superman
Amor Fati
The Eternal Return
The Will to Power; all of this goes far beyond anything that could be imagined by a Wagner or a Schopenhauer- BUT IT BEGINS FROM THAT PLACE. It draws from that Well.
It climbs up the next step to the summit, and surveys the past 10,000 years - in gratitude - , as it prepares to ride the wave of the next cycle: the new age which shall be dated from 1889 as year one.
Hail Nietzsche!