The Book of the Ring: A novelistic rendition of Wagner's Music-Drama: Der Ring des Nibelungen

ISBN-13: 9780615954882 / Angielski / Miękka / 2014 / 214 str.

David Prashker

Opis

"The Book of the Ring" is a prose narrative version of Wagner's "Ring-Cycle," presented here in the form of a novel, in the style and tradition of the greatest romances known to the world. If you have loved the tales of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, King Arthur and the Dragon, Jason and the Golden Fleece, Tristan and Isolde, you will want to read "The Book of the Ring." All these, and many more of the greatest myths and legends of all time, have their echoes, often their sources, in the Nibelungensaga, a mixture of Germanic and Norse mythology that reached its literary apotheosis in legends of the royal family of the Burgundians around the 5th century. In creating his greatest work, one of the greatest operas of all time, the Festspiel (Music-Drama) in four parts which he called "The Ring of the Nibelungen," Wagner took the original Nibelungensaga as his starting-point, but retold the tale in his own way, changing some names, adding new characters, and providing an ending that has had huge historical ramifications. In "The Book of the Ring," David Prashker has taken Wagner's libretto and stage directions and transformed into prose narrative what is performed as musical-theatre in opera houses all around the world, retelling this extraordinary tale of love and betrayal, of heroism and perfidy, of the rule and the fall of the gods, and of the curse of the ring fashioned from the Rheingold. An essential introduction to one of the greatest works in the history of music. David Prashker's fictional autobiography of Wagner, "A Pilgrimage To Bayreuth," is also available from The Argaman Press.