1924 5th Edtn or Later Reprint THE RING OF THE NIBLUNG By Richard Wagner Translated by Margaret Armour Illus. Arthur Rackham Good Opera

1924 5th Edition or Later Reprint , 
THE RING OF THE NIBLUNG
Two Volumes The Rhinegold and The Valyria and Siegfried & The Twilight of the Gods
By Richard Wagner Translated by Margaret Armour
Wilhelm Richard Wagner (22 May 1813 – 13 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas").

Illustrated By: Arthur Rackham
Arthur Rackham RWS (19 September 1867 – 6 September 1939) was an English book illustrator. He is recognised as one of the leading figures during the Golden Age of British book illustration. His work is noted for its robust pen and ink drawings, which were combined with the use of watercolour, a technique he developed due to his background as a journalistic illustrator. Rackham's 51 colour pieces for the early American tale Rip Van Winkle became a turning point in the production of books since – through colour-separated printing – it featured the accurate reproduction of colour artwork. His best-known works also include the illustrations for Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm.

Format: Hardcover,
Language: English
Dust Jacket: No Jacket, Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket

Published By: William Heinemann & Co / Doubleday Page & Co, London

quarto (4to 9+1⁄2 × 12 241 × 305),Pages 342

ISBN:

Spine features titles, ourobouros with Heinemann printed at heel. Illustrated throughout with the epic imagery of the saga by Arthur Rackham on smooth, coated plates. Very good first edition of this scarce combined volume in good, intact wrapper - rare in any form. Printed in Great Britain by William Clowes and Sons, Limited, Duchy Street, Stamford Street, London, and at Beccles. 160 and 182 pages of text with two dozen plates in each book of this single volume.Wagner's late dramas are considered his masterpieces. Der Ring des Nibelungen, commonly referred to as the Ring or "Ring cycle", is a set of four operas based loosely on figures and elements of Germanic mythology—particularly from the later Norse mythology—notably the Old Norse Poetic Edda and Volsunga Saga, and the Middle High German Nibelungenlied.
The first two components of the Ring cycle were Das Rheingold (The Rhinegold), which was completed in 1854, and Die Walküre (The Valkyrie), which was finished in 1856. In Das Rheingold, with its "relentlessly talky 'realism' [and] the absence of lyrical 'numbers'", Wagner came very close to the musical ideals of his 1849–1851 essays. Die Walküre, which contains what is virtually a traditional aria (Siegmund's Winterstürme in the first act), and the quasi-choral appearance of the Valkyries themselves, shows more "operatic" traits, but has been assessed by Barry Millington as "the music drama that most satisfactorily embodies the theoretical principles of 'Oper und Drama'... A thoroughgoing synthesis of poetry and music is achieved without any notable sacrifice in musical expression."
When Wagner returned to writing the music for the last act of Siegfried and for Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods), as the final part of the Ring, his style had changed once more to something more recognisable as "operatic" than the aural world of Rheingold and Walküre, though it was still thoroughly stamped with his own originality as a composer and suffused with leitmotifs.



SKU: BTETM0002158
Approximate Package Dimensions H: 12.5, L: 30, W: 25 (Units: cm), W: 2Kg