Academics flock to the world of opera with its wealth of references and themes, but it does seem that Wagner’s operas attract an equal amount of philosophers as well. Beyond the myths, the deconstructed interpretations and the economic/political/psychological/personal agendas, there also seems for many to be a spiritual threshold. If the concept holds that the gods are dead and that there is no outcry, “Long live the gods,” then what follows?

Albert Camus said that he created myths to fit his own passion and anguish. In our intellectual post-Camus world, there still seems to be a need for Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, and to experience its triumph, resolution, and promise beyond the world’s nightmarish frontiers of nihilism. From that nightmare, does our desire for atonement and forgiveness find eternal comfort, even in this secular world uninhabited by Rhinemaidens, dwarfs, giants, dragons, Valkyries, gods, and believers? I think so.