After writing 9,000 words on the “Ring” cycle, I thought that maybe I’d finally be done thinking about it. For a while, I was. Then, after what would be a two-month break in my obsession, I decided to return to something I wanted to write about at the time but never got to. During the six months I spent with the “Ring,” I worked mostly with its text—its complex storyline, its literary themes, its enduring pathos, its characters as people and as vectors for meaning. Rarely, however, did I write about the singing.
Unlimited access to our
