Walter Presents ... For Niall Hoskin, an ambitious attempt at making the text of Wagner’s ‘Ring’ cycle more accessible is marred by too many misreadings

This is a striking publication: in four large-format softbacks with vivid full-colour covers, it is the work of Frederick Paul Walter, an American scriptwriter, fine-arts broadcaster and translator of several Jules Verne novels. With this new annotated translation of the Ring libretto he aims to make Wagner’s work ‘accessible not only to scholars and opera buffs but also to fans of Tolkien, Star Wars, Hogwarts and Game of Thrones’. In his Introduction he vows to avoid tendentious interpretation, misrepresentation and ‘spoilers’. All this sets a high bar for what follows.