Der Ring des Nibelungen

Begun in the Revolutionary Years of 1848 and 1849, and occupying Wagner for a quarter-century, the "Ring" is one of the most extended of all artistic creations. Wagner binds this structure of over fifteen hours' duration with a complex web of Leitmotive (in English, leading motives). Each Leitmotif is a brief musical idea (usually a bit of melody but sometimes a harmonic or rhythmic idea) which stands for something in the drama often a character, but just as often an event, memory, or abstract idea. Through thematic transformation, the important players and events of the drama take on new guises and implications. For instance, in just the first scene of the first opera of the four, the all-important motif of the Rhine Gold, a joyful and sparkling song when first heard, transforms itself into a baleful denunciation of love and a symbol of evil power when dominion is gained over it by a character who denounces love. The idea of world-controlling power is extended to the well-intentioned world of the Gods at the end of this scene, when it is transformed again into the noble theme of Valhalla, their castle above the Rhine.

The basic conflict in the Ring cycle occurs between Alberich, a dwarf who has gained dominion over the power of Gold. With it he can gain control of an army of slaves who can manufacture the weapons and wealth that will make him invincible; he can rule strictly through power and money. Thus he seeks to overthrow the existing world order, headed by the god Wotan, who rules through the power of honor, that is, the keeping of contracts. All the contracts of the world are symbolically impaled on the shaft of his spear, which he cut from a magic tree called the World-Ash Tree after sacrificing one of his eyes for it in order to gain the hand of the goddess Fricka. Alberich and Wotan are, thus, mirror images of each other, the one having sacrificed love itself to gain unbounded power; the other having sacrificed to gain love and to rule in a power that both controls and is bound by the idea of honor. Fricka, for her part, is the goddess of marriage, enforcing that contract in her own right.

Spear and Ring are thus two of the drama's basic ideas; the suite of motives headed by the Ring are built from a simple pair of chords; the motives ruled by the Spear spring from its basic idea, which is just as simple: an imposingly-rhythmed downward major scale. A third powerful force, Nature, is heard at the very begining of the opera; it is represented by a single chord, unwound into a slow upward arpeggio, and it generates its own retinue of motives that represent the unfolding of powers beyond Man and Gods alike.

After Lohengrin, Wagner completed the first two of the four Ring operas, interrupted composition of the third for several other projects, and only returned to the Ring in earnest when the possibility of staging it as he wished began to appear possible. The whole Ring was finally premiered in 1876; the audience was inclined to see attending the four-day event as something more like visiting a shrine than simply going to the theatre for musical entertainment. This notion persists; to this day staging and attending integral performances of the Ring are considered the most significant events in the lives of both opera companies and opera-going fans. Numerous excerpts from the four immense scores are heard in symphonic concerts and various adaptations throughout the world.