The special role of Wagner's art lies not only in the genius with which he embodied his creative ideas, but also in the impact that he had on the culture of the 19th and 20th centuries. His work is still a source for research and the reasons for this phenomenon have not yet been defined. In the history of culture it is difficult to find a creator that had an impact on almost all kinds of arts and sciences: composers, philosophers, artists of the 19th and 20th centuries. Why did creativity of the opera composer have such a resonance in the culture of the 19th and 20th centuries? What is the uniqueness of his genius and his personality? It is obvious that such an effect is not limited to the influence of his brilliant music. Many of the major cultural figures emphasized that Wagner attracted them, in the first place, not as a musician, but as a thinker. Thus, Romain Rolland, telling about his impressions of staging Wagner's music dramas in Paris, admitted the intellectual pleasure from Wagner's works. Writers of completely different aesthetic views support this idea, for example, Leon Daudet, who admired Wagner's librettos. An unprecedented synthesis of music and ideas of the artist led to a unique composer's effect on the art of different countries and art types. From the point of view of Wagner's influence on the culture and ideas of his time, its reasons can be considered from the standpoint of sociological theories about the relationship between the leader and the masses, where the leader is Wagner, his ideas, his work and the masses are the European community of the middle of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Modern theories of social psychology describe in detail the characteristics of actions, perception, thinking of "the leader and the masses". In this paper, we analyze the mechanisms of Wagner's influence on the world and the era of his time with the positions expressed in the theories of G. Tarde and G. Le Bon. Relying on them in our study we follow the logic of the crowd behavior, and Wagner' methods of influencing it. Wagner, perhaps, was the only creator in the history of culture and music who could intuitively, by virtue of his genius, influencing the psychology of the masses, ensure enormous popularity and distribution to his works.
