Das Rheingold

About the work

Das Rheingold (The Rhinegold) is the first of the four music dramas of Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, told here in 24 scenes of about 80 seconds.

Wagner wrote the words and the music, composing it in 1853 and 1854 as the prologue to the cycle. It was first performed in Munich on 22 September 1869, at the Königliches Hof- und Nationaltheater, and with the whole cycle at the first Bayreuth Festival in August 1876.

The dwarf Alberich steals the gold from the Rhinemaidens and forges a ring that gives power over the world. Wotan, chief of the gods, takes it from him to pay the giants who built his fortress, Valhalla, and Alberich puts a curse on the ring that runs through the rest of the cycle. The gods cross a rainbow bridge into their new home.

Each scene plays Wagner's own notes: an excerpt of the score from the Wagner Ring Dataset (Weiß, Arifi-Müller, Krause, Zalkow, Klauk, Kleinertz and Müller; a piano reduction of the full score, CC BY 3.0), timed to the bar positions of a recorded performance, most often Georg Solti's with the Vienna Philharmonic, and played on sampled orchestral instruments. Nothing is sung: each character has a colour and an instrument, and the lights follow the notes, with the thunder, hoofbeats, clashes and fire a staged production would add. The scenes pick the most dramatic passages of each act; it is an entertaining staging, not a complete performance.

In November 2026 the four operas play on the house on the Ring nights, one opera a night in turn, at an early and a late show; the times are on Live.

The stage

From the street the porch is the back of the scene, so the rock with the gold is the middle of Porch Front; Left and Right are the near banks. Subjects never begin on Side (enter from the free end of Right, pop up on a front run, or rise out of the porch), and a dim themed bed keeps every run lit.

Who is who