The Opera

Hello all,

I had trouble picking an opera for our paper at first, but then I noticed that there was one called Der Ring Des Nibelungen. It is based on Norse Mythology. The description from I got from it is that it is about this "magical Ring" forged by a dwarf from stolen gold. This ring basically grants the holder power to rule the world. It obviously is going to attract attention by many types of different people. Each one wants this power from the ring, but each person that holds it ends up in a conflict. This intrigues me because this opera sounds a lot like J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. I am going to compare similarities and differences between the two as I am a Tolkien fan. I would bet money that Tolkien was somewhat influenced from Der Ring Des Nibelungen.

It is an extremely long movie as the whole opera is divided into four seperate sections. Das rheingold , Das Wakure, Siegfried, and gotterdammerung. It seems as though each one is about 2.5 hours each... I think. I may for the sake of this paper focus on Das Rheingold because thats a lot of stuff to go through, but I'll probably skim through the others just to get a grasp on the scenes.