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Article: Valhalla by the Bay.(Wagner: Der Ring des Nibelungen, San Francisco Opera)(Review)
- Article from:
- New Criterion
- Article date:
- September 1, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 Foundation for Cultural Review. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Richard Wagner assumed that his Ring des Nibelungen would become merely a memory after his death, for he could not conceive of anyone else taming his tetralogy's sprawl or tending to its complex mythology. But the composer's wife, Cosima, was not easily discouraged. As her husband's most ardent champion, she could not allow his grandest creation to deliquesce into legend, as the world of the gods does at the conclusion of Gotterdammerung. Thus in 1896, thirteen years after her husband's death, and twenty years after the cycle's premiere, Cosima Wagner began a tradition that would over time become one of music's most enduring rituals: reviving the Ring at the Bayreuth ...