Excerpt from Wagner's Tristan Und Isolde The first years of his exile at Zurich were taken up by writing his prose works with the idea of promulgating his theories. For five years he wrote no music, and the struggle for existence made this period one of the keenest anxiety. Yet this terrible time proved to be one of the greatest value for his art. That vast conception of a trilogy with a prologue, The Ring, was the work to which he turned when his prose writings were coming to an end. Das Rheingold was finished in 18 54, Die Walkure in 1856, and half of Siegfried in 1857. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.