A Rounded ‘Ring’? Kate Hopkins fears that two new books on the tetralogy highlight politics and text respectively at the expense of its emotional and musical appeal

Reviews of Mark Berry and Nicholas Vazsonyi, eds, The Cambridge Companion to Wagner’s ‘Der Ring des Nibelungen’ (Cambridge University Press, 2020); Michael Buckley, Dramatic Technique and Meaning in Wagner’s ‘Ring’ (Austin Macauley Publishers, 2020).

March 2021, Volume 15, Number 1, 83–8.

Richard Wagner’s music drama Der Ring des Nibelungen is one of the most substantial and intricate works in the operatic repertory. Its text reflects Wagner’s copious studies of literature, history and philosophy; its musical innovations have had a colossal effect on all the arts, and preoccupied scholars for generations. At the same time, the Ring has such narrative and emotional immediacy that it can hold children spellbound, and move audience members who know little about Wagner to tears – like the singer Rolando Villazón, who attended his first Walküre in 2005 not even knowing its plot.

The new Cambridge Companion to Wagner’s ‘Der Ring des Nibelungen’ certainly does justice to the Ring’s intellectual scope.