Das Rheingold

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Das Rheingold
Music drama by Richard Wagner
Bühnenbildentwurf Rheingold.JPG
Alberich's seizure of the Rhine gold, as depicted in Scene 1 of the 1876 production
Librettist Richard Wagner
Language German
Based on Nordic and German legends
Premiere 22 September 1869
National Theatre Munich
Das Rheingold (pronunciation (help·info); The Rhinegold), WWV 86A, is the first of
the four music dramas that constitute Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen,
(English: The Ring of the Nibelung). It was performed, as a single opera, at the
National Theatre Munich on 22 September 1869, and received its first performance as
part of the Ring cycle at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, on 13 August 1876.

Wagner wrote the Ring librettos in reverse order, so that Das Rheingold was the
last of the texts to be written; it was, however, the first to be set to music. The
score was completed in 1854, but Wagner was unwilling to sanction its performance
until the whole cycle was complete; he worked intermittently on this music until
1874. The 1869 Munich premiere of Das Rheingold was staged, much against Wagner's
wishes, on the orders of his patron, King Ludwig II of Bavaria. Following its 1876
Bayreuth premiere, the Ring cycle was introduced into the worldwide repertory, with
performances in all the main opera houses, in which it has remained a regular and
popular fixture.

In his 1851 essay Opera and Drama, Wagner had set out new principles as to how
music dramas should be constructed, under which the conventional forms of opera
(arias, ensembles, choruses) were rejected. Rather than providing word-settings,
the music would interpret the text emotionally, reflecting the feelings and moods
behind the work, by using a system of recurring leitmotifs to represent people,
ideas and situations. Das Rheingold was Wagner's first work that adopted these
principles, and his most rigid adherence to them, despite a few deviations – the
Rhinemaidens frequently sing in ensemble.

As the "preliminary evening" within the cycle, Das Rheingold gives the background
to the events that drive the main dramas of the cycle. It recounts Alberich's theft
of the Rhine gold after his renunciation of love; his fashioning of the all-
powerful ring from the gold and his enslavement of the Nibelungs; Wotan's seizure
of the gold and the ring, to pay his debt to the giants who have built his fortress
Valhalla; Alberich's curse on the ring and its possessors; Erda's warning to Wotan
to forsake the ring; the early manifestation of the curse's power after Wotan
yields the ring to the giants; and the gods' uneasy entry into Valhalla, under the
shadow of their impending doom.