As this message was backed by a small pension which would enable the musician to keep the wolf from the door, he hopefully went to Munich.  But, in spite of the sovereign’s continued favour, Wagner found so many enemies that the sojourn there became very unpleasant.  It was then that the architect Semper made the first plans for a theatre, in which the king intended that ‘The Nibelungen Ring’ should be played, as he had formally commissioned Wagner to complete the work.

Driven away from his native land once more by the bitterness of his enemies, Wagner, who still enjoyed Ludwig’s entire favour, withdrew in 1865 to Triebschen, where the ‘Ring’ progressed steadily.  It was there, in 1869, that he completed the Siegfried score, and began that of ‘The Twilight of the Gods,’ which was finished only some time later.  As the King’s plan for building a national theatre for the representation of ‘The Nibelungen Ring’ had to be abandoned, the scheme was taken up by the municipality of the little town of Bayreuth.  Wagner was cordially invited to take up his residence there, and settled in his new home in 1872, when he was already sixty years of age.

Thanks to munificent private subscriptions secured in great part by the Wagner societies in various parts of the world, the long planned theatre was finally begun.  It was finished in 1876, and the entire ‘Nibelungen Ring’ was performed there in the month of August, the very best singers of the day taking all the principal parts, which they rendered to the best of their abilities.  The result was a magnificent performance, a musical triumph; but as the venture was not a financial success, the performances were not repeated in the following summer.  Several new ventures, however, were made, and another Wagner festival has just taken place, of which the real result is yet unknown, although the attendance was very large, the audience being composed of people from all parts of the world.  Thus Wagner completed and rendered the series of operas, which include plays ‘for three days and a fore evening,’ whence the series is generally called a ‘trilogy,’ although it is really composed of four whole operas.

Away down in the translucent depths of the Rhine, three beautiful nymphs, Woglinde, Wellgunde, and Flosshilde, daughters of the river-god, dart in and out among the jagged rocks.  They have been stationed there to guard the Rhinegold, the priceless treasure of the deep, whence comes all the warm golden light which illumines the utmost recesses of their dark and damp abode.

The nymphs suddenly pause in their merry game, for the wily dwarf Alberich has emerged from one of the sombre chasms.  He is a Nibelung, a spirit of night and darkness, and slowly gropes his way to one of the upper ridges, whence he can see the graceful forms of the nymphs, watch their merry evolutions, and overhear them repeatedly admonish each other to keep watch over the gleaming treasure, which their father, the Rhinegod, has intrusted to their keeping, warning them that just such a dark and misshapen creature as the dwarf would try to wrest it from their grasp:—­