Siegfried

English National Opera Guides are ideal companions to the opera. They provide stimulating introductory articles together with the complete text of each opera in English and the original. Wagner wanted Siegfried, the third music drama in The Ring of the Nibelung, to be the most popular of the cycle. Despite its many beautiful and dramatic scenes and its vital part in the drama, it has not fulfilled its composer's aspiration: Professor Ulrich Weisstein examines why. Professor Anthony Newcomb contributes a detailed analysis of Wagner's use of leitmotifs, identifying the different purposes they fulfill. Derrick Puffett takes up the extraordinary fact that Wagner composed Tristan and Isolde and The Mastersingers of Nuremberg in the eight-year hiatus between his beginning and completion of Siegfried's second act; Puffett explores the subsequent changes in Wagner's musical imagination that enabled the composer to complete his enormous task. The thematic guide compliments those found in the other Opera Guides to The Ring Cycle.