Hello! This Wagner aficionado has come out of lurk today! I agree with you, Senor M, regarding "surrendering" to the Ring. As Bill Parker once wrote: "you can waste time walking around it, but it would be better to just climb up and explore it." For preliminary explorations of the Ring, a "tour-guide" can be of help. The best one I know of of Deryck Cooke's two-CD "Introduction."

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The hardest knife ill us'd doth lose his edge. Shakespeare- Sonnet 95