Siegfried

Sobre el libro Siegfried de Richard Wagner publicado por Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd. al 2004:

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 it’s 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 fulfil.

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´.