Richard Wagner's vast Der Ring des Nibelungen cycle comprises four full-length operas (Das Rheingold, Die Walkure, Siegfried and Gotterdammerung) and is arguably the most extraordinary achievement in the history of opera. His own libretto to the operas, translated by Andrew Porter, is an intricate system of metric patterns, imaginative metaphors and alliteration, combining to produce the music in text.

A score embodying the best available musical text Historical background--what is known of the circumstances surrounding the origin of the work, including (where relevant) original source material A detailed analysis of the music, by the editor of the volume or another well-known scholar Other significant analytic essays and critical comments, exposing the student to a variety of opinions about the music.

Poor, frustrated, and angered by the fashion-mongers and mode-purveyors of art, Richard Wagner published The Art-Work of the Future in 1849. It marked a turning point in his life: an appraisal of the revolutionary passions of mid-century Europe, his farewell to symphonic music, and his vision of the music to come.Beethoven s Ninth Symphony was unsurpassable, he wrote. Henceforth "The Folk must of necessity be the Artist of the Future," and only artists who were in harmony with the Folk could know what harmony was for. The essay became a touchstone for Wagner, his family, friends, and...

Musical genius, polemicist, explosive personality that was the nineteenth-century German composer Richard Wagner, who paid as much attention to his reputation as to his genius. Often maddening, and sometimes called mad, Wagner wrote with the same intensity that characterized his music.The letters and essays collected in Judaism in Music and Other Essays were published during the 1850s and 1860s, the period when he was chiefly occupied with the creation of The Ring of the Nibelung. Highlighting this collection is the notorious 1850 article Judaism in Music, which caused such a firestorm...