Das Rheingold
| Das Rheingold | |
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| Music drama by Richard Wagner | |
Emil Fischer as Wotan at the 1889 New York premiere
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| Librettist | Richard Wagner |
| Language | German |
| Premiere | 22 September 1869 National Theatre Munich |
Das Rheingold (
pronunciation ; The Rhinegold), WWV 86A, is the first of the four music dramas that constitute Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, or in English, 'The Ring of the Nibelung.'
Das Rheingold premiered at the National Theatre Munich on 22 September 1869, with August Kindermann in the role of Wotan, Heinrich Vogl as Loge, and Karl Fischer as Alberich. Wagner wanted this work to premiere as part of the entire cycle, but was forced to allow the performance at the insistence of his patron King Ludwig II of Bavaria. The work was first performed as part of the complete cycle on 13 August 1876, in the Bayreuth Festspielhaus.
Although Das Rheingold comes first in the sequence of Ring operas, it was the last to be conceived. Wagner's plans for the cycle grew backwards from the tale of the death of the hero Siegfried, to include his youth and then the story of the events around his conception and of how the Valkyrie Brünnhilde was punished for trying to save his parents against Wotan's instructions. So in August 1851, Wagner wrote in "Eine Mittheilung an meine Freunde" ("A Communication to My Friends"), "I propose to produce my myth in three complete dramas...". However, by October, he had decided that this trilogy required a prelude and the text of "Eine Mittheilung" was duly altered to reflect the change. To the sentence quoted above he added the words, "which will be preceded by a great prelude".
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