=The Ring of the Nibelung=.—In the old Teutonic folk-epic, the _Nibelungen Lied_ (Lay of the Nibelung), Wagner found the inspiration for his next and most extended work. This is the great tetralogy, _Der Ring des Nibelung_ (The Ring of the Nibelung), composed of four dramas designed for continuous representation: _Das Rheingold_ (The Rhine Gold), _Die Walküre_ (The Valkyrie), _Siegfried_, _Die Götterdämmerung_ (The Twilight of the Gods). It was begun and partially finished during his stay in Switzerland, but his discouragement over what he felt to be the hopeless task of ever securing its performance led him to abandon it and to set to work on another drama which he decided should be lighter in character and less difficult to execute, in order the more readily to find acceptance. =Tristan and Isolde=.—The result of this resolution was _Tristan und Isolde_, but far from being a return to his earlier style, as he had planned, it was and probably still is the most intricate operatic score in existence. It was accepted by the Opera in Vienna, but after fifty-seven rehearsals the singers declared themselves unable to learn it and it was given up as impossible of execution. Three years after his return to Germany an unlooked-for change took place in his fortunes. The young king of Bavaria, Ludwig II, who had just ascended the throne, had been an ardent admirer of Wagner since as a boy of fifteen he had heard _Lohengrin_. Hardly had he taken his seat before he summoned the discouraged composer to Munich and assured him support and protection. _Tristan und Isolde_ was soon brought out (1865), and Wagner busied himself with the composition of _Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg_ (The Master Singers of Nuremberg), produced in 1868. =Die Meistersinger=.—This is his only comic work, full of hitherto unsuspected humor and geniality. The story of the young poet endeavoring to gain admission to the jealously-guarded ranks of the master singers who, notwithstanding the beauty of his song, reject him because he has violated their hide-bound rules has a distinctly autobiographic value. Wagner had endured too much from similar pedants to be lenient with the picture he drew of their prototypes in medieval Nuremberg. As strikingly diatonic in style as _Tristan und Isolde_ is chromatic, these two works are the strongest illustrations of his versatility.