The scale and grandeur of Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelung has no precedent and no successor. It preoccupied Wagner for much of his adult life and revolutionized the nature of opera, the orchestra, the demands on singers and on the audience itself. The four operas—The Rhinegold, The Valkyrie, Siegfried, and Twilight of the Gods—are complete worlds, conjuring up extraordinary mythological landscapes through sound as much as staging. Wagner wrote...

The third opera in the "Ring cycle." Siegfried follows the adventures of the son of demigods Siegmund and Sieglinde as he conquers his enemies and rescues the beauteous Brunnhilde with the help of his magic sword.

The opera opens with Tristan taking Isolde (daughter of the King of Ireland) to be married to his uncle, King Marke of Cornwall. The opera unfolds as the story of a love which can only realise itself by abandoning the will to live.

German composer Richard Wagner was notoriously anti-Semitic, and his writings on Jews were later embraced by Hitler and the Nazis. But there is another, lesser-known side to this story. For years, many of Wagner's closest associates were Jews, young musicians who became personally devoted to him, and provided crucial help to his work and career.

In these 24 lectures filled with musical excerpts, enjoy a rich and multifaceted exploration of the trailblazing works and outsized life of this historically pivotal composer. Your immersion in Wagner's art includes the following:

The Flying Dutchman (which illustrates several of Wagner's key compositional innovations)

Tannhäuser (the saga of a medieval knight torn between two worlds)

Tristan and Isolde (Wagner's crowning masterpiece)

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Actor and writer Stephen Fry explores his passion for the world's most controversial composer, but can he salvage Richard Wagner's music from its dark associations with anti-Semitism and Hitler? Fry's quest begins in southern Germany where he is granted unique access to Bayreuth's legendary annual Wagner festival. In Switzerland he discovers the origins of Wagner's masterpiece "The Ring." In Bavaria he marvels at the fairytale castle inspired by Wagner's...