Ride of the Valkyries (Great Music)

THE RIDE OF THE VALKYRIES (Richard Wagner, German, 1870/76)

After decades of toil, Richard Wagner premiered the full cycle of The Ring of the Nibelung in 1876, featuring a story and characters loosely based on Norse sagas and the German Nibelungenlied. Its four parts--The Rhinegold, The Valkyrie, Siegfried, and Twilight of the Gods--require about 15 hours for a full performance, usually stretched over four nights when they're all done together. Act 3 of the second part, The Valkyrie, opens with the famous "Ride of the Valkyries." You may never have seen Wagner, but if you've seen the napalm airstrike from helicopters in Apocalypse Now, or heard Elmer Fudd sing, "Kill the wabbit! KILL the WABbit! KILL THE WABBIT!" then you know the piece which, along with the "Bridal Chorus" from Lohengrin ("Here Comes the Bride!") is probably Wagner's most famous.

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(Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons; CTTO)