Fate & Foreboding: Ring Cycle Highlights

Welcome to our specially curated playlists, highlighting the essential moments within Wagner’s mighty operatic cycle The Ring of the Nibelung. Through each of our four playlists, you’ll discover the major themes and motifs that make The Ring such a compelling experience. And for those using the Apple Music Classical app, we offer an exclusive Listening Guide commentary as each track plays. The forces of fate and foreboding are strong throughout The Ring. Alberich the dwarf’s curse on the golden ring casts its sinister influence in all four operas, while the menacing Dragon motif, representing the dragon Fafner who guards the ring, thunders ominously in both Das Rheingold and Siegfried. The last of the four operas, Götterdämmerung, begins eerily as the three Norns (sister-goddesses) foretell the fall of Valhalla. In the same opera, you’ll witness the hair-raising nuptials between Gunther and Brünnhilde, resulting in Siegfried’s murder and one of the most powerful, grief-stricken passages of music ever conceived: Siegfried’s Funeral March. As the funeral pyre is lit, the flames lick at the logs stacked around the fortress of Valhalla, consuming the gods and the world they sought to rule. All the music is taken from Georg Solti’s landmark studio recording, made between 1958 and 1965—the first ever made of the complete Ring, its legendary status secured by a matchless cast and orchestra, and pioneering sound that has now been remastered in superb Spatial Audio.