Reddit reviews Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung: A Companion

Hi, I created my own Wagner Opera major at Conservatory, so I'll do my best to help:

I have to say that live performance is the best way to experience the Ring, but otherwise the Solti recording is one of the best (Levine, Barenboim, and Janowski/Staatskapelle are up there too). The music is made up of leitmotivs, or musical phrases associated with characters, ideas, feelings etc. The leitmotivs constantly change based on context, and there are around 100 of them (pending on who's counting). To make sense of the opera, you need to have just a basic understanding of them. This is a good list of the more important ones: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcPgcaow01FUWAH-b-z6Ix7W3_7QBBjLN Don't bother memorizing them, just familiarize and listening to the operas will do the rest :)

Additionally, a basic plot understanding is useful, and the Wikipedia articles for each individual opera are sufficient:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Rheingold#Synopsis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Walk%C3%BCre#Synopsis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siegfried_(opera)#Synopsis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6tterd%C3%A4mmerung#Synopsis

I also find that listening along to a text and translation is most effective, which you can find here:

http://www.murashev.com/opera/Richard_Wagner

There is one book I would strongly recommend to any Wagner newbie: Bryan Magee's "Aspects of Wagner." In my opinion, it is by far the best short book on Wagner. While not about the Ring itself, it covers exactly how all of Wagner's operas function (I think they are really quite different from all other opera), his concept of art, his influence, and his controversies. It should give the proper frame of mind to dig into the operas. If you really want something focused just on the Ring, however, I'd recommend M. Owen Lee's introduction. It's a slim volume with a summary, a motif index, and some commentary on the big ideas. Or, there's a nice Ring companion book put together by Barry Millington with a full text translation that also has scholarly essays on conception and context, as well as index of important leitmotivs:

https://www.amazon.com/Aspects-Wagner-Bryan-Magee/dp/0192840126

https://www.amazon.com/Wagners-Ring-Turning-Sky-Round/dp/0879101865

https://www.amazon.com/Wagners-Ring-Nibelung-Barry-Millington-ebook/dp/B00D3F94RE

Apologies for the length, I hope this was at least a little useful, and let me know if you'd like to know any more :)