1847, the first act on June 8 of that year, the second act on August 2, and the Prelude on August 28. The orchestration was done during the following winter and spring. Franz Liszt conducted the première of the opera at Weimar on August 28, 1850. The Prelude was played for the first time in concert on January 17, 1853, at the Leipzig Gewandhaus, Julius Rietz conducting.

Discussing the Prelude, William Foster Apthorp wrote:

“Like the hero’s career in the opera, it begins, as it were, in the clouds, then gradually descends farther and farther until it embraces all the lower tones of the orchestra, and then returns to the clouds again. Its single theme is developed in free polyphony by various successive groups of instruments, each of which groups proceeds with free counter-thematic work as the next group enters with the theme. First we have the violins piano in their higher registers; then come the flutes, oboes, and clarinets; then the violas, ’cellos, horns, bassoons, and double-basses; lastly the trumpets, trombones, and the tuba fortissimo; then comes the decrescendo, ending pianissimo in the high violins and flutes.”

The composer, who could descant with the best of them, paraded his rhetorical gifts on the Prelude (the translation is by William Ashton Ellis):

“Love seemed to have vanished from a world of hatred and quarreling; as a lawgiver she was no longer to be found among the communities of men. Emancipating itself from barren care for gain and possession, the sole arbiter of all worldly intercourse, the human heart’s unquenchable love-longing, again at length craved to appease a want which, the more warmly and intensely it made itself felt under the pressure of reality, was the less easy to satisfy on account of this very reality. It was beyond the confines of the actual world that man’s ecstatic imaginative power fixed the source as well as the output of this incomprehensible impulse of love, and from the desire of a comforting sensuous conception of this supersensuous idea invested it with a wonderful form, which, under the name of the ‘Holy Grail,’ though conceived as actually existing, yet unapproachably far off, was believed in, longed for, and sought for.

“The Holy Grail was the costly vessel out of which, at the Last Supper, our Saviour drank with His disciples, and in which His blood was received when out of love for His brethren He suffered upon the cross, and which till this day has been preserved with lively zeal as the source of undying love; albeit, at one time this cup of salvation was taken away from unworthy mankind, but at length was brought back again from the heights of heaven by a band of angels, and delivered into the keeping of fervently loving, solitary men who, wondrously strengthened and blessed by its presence, and purified in heart, were consecrated as the earthly champions of eternal love.

“This miraculous delivery of the Holy Grail, escorted by an angelic host, and the handing of it over into the custody of highly favored men, was selected by the author of ‘Lohengrin’ for the introduction of his drama, as the subject to be musically portrayed; just as here, for the sake of explanation, he may be allowed to bring it forward as an object for the mental receptive power of his hearers.

“To the enraptured look of the highest celestial longing for love, the clearest blue atmosphere of heaven at first seems to condense itself into a wonderful, scarcely perceptible but magically pleasing vision; with gradually increasing precision the wonder-working angelic host is delineated in infinitely delicate lines as, conveying the holy vessel (the Grail) in its midst, it insensibly descends from the blazing heights of heaven. As the vision grows more and more distinct, as it hovers over the surface of the earth, a narcotic fragrant odor issues from its midst; entrancing vapors well up from it like golden clouds, and overpower the sense of the astonished gazer, who, from the lowest depths of his palpitating heart, feels himself wonderfully urged to holy emotions.

“Now throbs the heart with the pain of ecstasy, now with the heavenly joy which agitates the breast of the beholder; with irresistible might all the repressed germs of love rise up in it, stimulated to a wondrous growth by the vivifying magic of the vision; however much it can expand, it will break at last with vehement longing, impelled to self-sacrifice and toward an ultimate dissolving reveals again in the supremest bliss as, imparting comfort the nearer it approaches, the divine vision reveals itself to our entranced senses, and when at last the holy vessel shows itself in the marvel of undraped reality, and clearly revealed to him to whom it is vouchsafed to behold it, as the Holy Grail, which from out of its divine contents spreads broadcast the sunbeams of highest love, like the lights of a heavenly fire that stirs all hearts with the heat of the flame of its everlasting glow, the beholder’s brain reels—he falls down in a state of adoring annihilation. Yet upon him who is thus lost in love’s rapture the Grail pours down its blessing, with which it designates him as its chosen knight; the blazing flame subsides into an ever-decreasing brightness, which now, like a gasp of breath of the most unspeakable joy and emotion, spreads itself over the surface of the earth and fills the breast of him who adores with a blessedness of which he had no foreboding. With chaste rejoicing, and smilingly looking down, the angelic host mounts again to heaven’s heights; the source of love, which had dried up the earth, has been brought by them to the world again—the Grail they have left in the custody of the pure-minded men, in whose hands its contents overflow as a source of blessing—and the angelic host vanishes in the glorious light of heaven’s blue sky, as, before, it thence came down.”

“Der Ring des Nibelungen”

A colossal work in four parts, the Ring’s central theme is one of redemption. The Norse God Wotan, addicted to the amassing of power, may not achieve it through deceit or treachery. By trickery he obtains from the Nibelung Alberich a ring possessing untold powers, made of the gold of the Rhine. Alberich hisses a curse, in losing it, which only a pure hero acting as a free agent may remove.

Wotan’s attempts to get the ring, his often devious reasoning, and the panoplied purpose of the whole, make of the tetralogy an epic study in the emotions, the humanities, the loyalties, the shortcomings, in short, in the whole moral and spiritual concept of the individual and society.

The Ride of the Valkyries from “Die Walküre”

In the time intervening between Das Rheingold and Die Walküre Wotan has worked out a plan to save the gods from destruction. The ring must not fall into the wrong hands, those of Alberich, for instance, for the wily and greedy creature knows full well its powers. The thing to do, then, is to regain possession of it without “craft or violence.” He must employ some means above such devices. Consequently his plan is to bring into being a hero who shall not be his servitor, but rather the agency for the accomplishment through a free, totally unguided will. Thus we come to the saga of the Walsungs, human descendants of Wotan, and one of them, Siegmund, is the hero chosen.

The Valkyries are the nine daughters of Wotan by the earth goddess of wisdom, Erda. And of these Brünnhilde is Wotan’s favorite. She interferes with her father’s wishes in order to aid Siegmund, however, and she is