The names of the last two Ring operas, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung, were probably not definitively settled until 1856.

Prose drafts survive for all four Ring operas.

In 1863 the texts of all four Ring operas were published for the first time under their present titles.

Some find "Das Rheingold" the dullest "Ring" opera, even though at two and a half hours it is also the shortest.

"It's roughly, on a per opera basis, what it cost to do each of the four Ring operas," Ms. Mathieson said.

Musicians and singers in the hundreds are here for orchestra concerts and Wagner's "Ring" operas.

Not long afterwards, Wagner became stuck in the middle of writing the third of his four Ring operas, "Siegfried."

Since the mid-1980's his tempos in Wagner's "Ring" operas have become noticeably, some would say provocatively, slower.

Although Das Rheingold comes first in the sequence of Ring operas, it was the last to be conceived.

And by the time this third "Ring" opera arrived, Mr. Wonder's visual coups had lost any power to amaze.