Richard Wagner

Das Rheingold introduces a primeval collection of gods, nymphs, giants, and dwarves who instigate the situations inherited by Wotan's children, the humans Siegmund and Sieglinde, and the Valkyrie, Brünnhilde. It is a brief glimpse of an Edenic world, already beginning to be corrupted by greed and lust for power. Musically, Das Rheingold introduces many of the motives associated with objects and ideas of importance in the drama. Among these are the Rheingold, the Ring, Walhall, Wotan's spear, and the renunciation of love. Das Rheingold also introduces Wagner's huge Ring orchestra, its versatility, and at times, Wagner's sheer audacity with sound. At one astonishing moment in the transition to Scene Three, the orchestra falls silent, leaving the enslaved Nibelungs' forging rhythm to ring out on 18 tuned anvils. Rheingold requires six harps for its conclusion, accompanying the forlorn cries of the betrayed Rhine Daughters. The extraordinary prelude, which is in essence the prelude to the entire cycle, should also be mentioned. The first sound the listener hears is a low E flat, played on the double basses, which seems to appear out of nowhere. This single thread of sound slowly becomes a remarkable extension of the single key of E flat, layering arpeggio upon arpeggio and figuration upon figuration, adding different orchestral voices with their different colors to suggest the growth of a mighty river from its source to an overwhelming torrent. Wagner wrote in his autobiography that the sound came to him in a trancelike state in which he felt almost drowned. Although there is no evidence to contradict this account, Wagner often used fanciful accounts of unmediated inspiration to explain his compositions. Against Wagner's wishes, Das Rheingold was premiered in 1869 for Wagner's patron, King Ludwig II, in Munich. Wagner had intended to introduce the complete cycle at his new Festival Theater in Bayreuth, and neither the work nor the opera house had yet been completed. Ludwig did not want to wait to hear the completed operas.