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Updated: May 24, 2025
Wagner must have learnt between Das Rheingold and the Kaisermarsch that there are yet several dramas to be interpolated in The Ring after The Valkyries before the allegory can tell the whole story, and that the first of these interpolated dramas will be much more like a revised Rienzi than like Siegfried.
Bach used it too, and we find it the rainbow theme in "Das Rheingold" is an example in Wagner. But with these composers "word-painting," as it is called, seems always to be used for a special effect; whereas it is the very essence of Purcell's music.
But in the "Dutchman" Wagner sought seriously to realise himself, to find the mode of best expressing the best that was in him. That mode he found in "The Rheingold" and mastered in "The Valkyrie," with its continuous development and transmogrification of themes. Compared with "The Valkyrie," "The Flying Dutchman" is ill-contrived and stagy. It is flecked here and there with vulgarity.
This may explain the complete renunciation of the past which appears in 'Das Rheingold, the total severance from the Italian tradition which lingers in the pages of 'Lohengrin, and the brilliant unfolding of a new scheme of lyric drama planned upon a scale of unexampled magnificence and elaboration.
"Never in all my life," writes the author, "have I had such exquisite joy in work as I had in painting the illustrations for this volume of 'Moths of the Limberlost. Colour work had advanced to such a stage that I knew from the beautiful reproductions in Arthur Rackham's 'Rheingold and Valkyrie' and several other books on the market, that time so spent would not be lost. Mr.
Thus in Die Walkuere, in Wotan's long speech to Bruennhilde in Act II., he sketches the main events of Das Rheingold. In Siegfried the amusing riddle scene, a reminiscence of the Eddic Alvismal, seems intended to relate events which have gone before. In Goetterdaemmerung it is Siegfried who just before his death tells the story of the preceding evening.
Returning the craft to its owner, he resumed sword and cloak once more, and found his way to a tavern, where he ordered a satisfactory meal. In the evening he arrived at the Rheingold, and meeting the landlord in the large, empty, public cellar, asked that worthy if his friends had assembled yet, and was told they were all within the Kaiser cellar. "Good!" he cried.
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was born in Leipzig on May 22nd, 1813. He died in Venice February 13th, 1883. The facts of his career are too well known to justify rehearsal. The dates of the composition and first performances of his operas are: "Rienzi," 1838-40; première in Dresden, 1842. "Lohengrin," 1845-48; Weimar, 1850. "Das Rheingold," 1848-53; Munich, 1869. "Die Walküre," 1848-56; Munich, 1870.
If the history of Germany from 1849 to 1876 had been the history of Siegfried and Wotan transposed into the key of actual life Night Falls On The Gods would have been the logical consummation of Das Rheingold and The Valkyrie instead of the operatic anachronism it actually is. But, as a matter of fact, Siegfried did not succeed and Bismarck did.
Considering the state of the imperial city of Frankfort, one would not expect to find such a gathering as was assembled in the Kaiser cellar of the Rheingold drinking tavern.
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