Annotated Ring Cycle

Scriptwriter, fine-arts broadcaster, publicist, translator, and college theater director, Frederick Paul Walter has worked for Lyric Opera of Chicago, Houston Grand Opera, Opera Southwest, and other performance organizations. He has written on Wagner, classical music, and opera for nearly half a century and has published modern translations of science fiction thrillers by French novelist Jules Verne for State University of New York and the U.S. Naval Institute. He lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

This volume is noteworthy for its inclusion of pen drawings by Mott and other relevant colorful historical illustrations placed throughout.... In this volume’s robust introduction, Walter states that his annotations will center Wagner’s work (i.e., the Ring cycle) and its text as the authoritative sources (instead of drawing on outside commentaries and analyses of the opera). To that end, Walter uses his own English translations of the text of Die Walku¨re, keeping in mind the alliterative effects and rhyme scheme that were important to Wagner’s original German (which in Walter’s book is printed alongside the English). At the end of each act of Die Walku¨re, Walter gives a one-page review of its events and themes. Walter’s useful introduction to Wagner’s masterpiece breaks down the epic opera’s plot, musical motifs, and poetic structure into digestible pieces of information; ideal for readers with any amount of previous knowledge of the Ring cycle.