The third act opens upon a peaceful Sunday-morning scene in the sleepy old town, and shows us Sachs sitting in his arm-chair at the window reading his Bible, and now and then expressing his hopes for Walter’s success, as the great contest is soon to take place.  At last he leans back, and after a brief meditation commences a characteristic song ("Wahn! wahn!  Ueberall wahn!").  A long dialogue ensues between him and Walter, and then as Eva, David, Magdalena, and Beckmesser successively enter, the scene develops into a magnificent quintet, which is one of the most charming numbers in the opera.  The situation then suddenly changes.  The stage-setting represents an open meadow on the banks of the Pegnitz.  The river is crowded with boats.  The plain is covered with tents full of merrymakers.  The different guilds are continually arriving.  A livelier or more stirring scene can hardly be imagined than Wagner has here pictured, with its accompaniment of choruses by the various handicraftsmen, their pompous marches, and the rural strains of town pipers.  At last the contest begins.  Beckmesser attempts to get through his song and dismally fails.  Walter follows him with the beautiful prize-song, “Morgenlich leuchtend in rosigem Schein.”  He wins the day and the hand of Eva.  Exultant Sachs trolls out a lusty lay ("Verachtet mir der Meister nicht"), and the stirring scene ends with the acclamations of the people ("Heil Sachs!  Hans Sachs!  Heil Nuernberg’s theurem Sachs!").

THE RING OF THE NIBELUNG.

“Der Ring des Nibelungen,” a trilogy, the subject taken from the Nibelungen Lied and adapted by the composer, was first conceived by Wagner during the composition of “Lohengrin.”  The four dramatic poems which constitute its cyclus were written as early as 1852, which will correct a very general impression that this colossal work was projected during the closing years of his life.  On the contrary, it was the product of his prime.  Hueffer, in his biographical sketch of Wagner, says that he hesitated between the historical and mythical principles as the subjects of his work,—­Frederick the First representing the former, and Siegfried, the hero of Teutonic mythology, the latter.  Siegfried was finally selected.  “Wagner began at once sketching the subject, but gradually the immense breadth and grandeur of the old types began to expand under his hands, and the result was a trilogy, or rather tetralogy, of enormous dimensions, perhaps the most colossal attempt upon which the dramatic muse has ventured since the times of AEschylus.”  The trilogy is really in four parts,—­“Das Rheingold” (the Rhinegold); “Die Walkuere” (the Valkyrie); “Siegfried”; and “Die Goetterdaemmerung” (the Twilight of the Gods), “The Rhinegold” being in the nature of an introduction to the trilogy proper, though occupying an evening for its performance.  Between the years 1852 and 1856 the composer wrote the music of the “Rhinegold”