Wagner was utterly dissatisfied with the condition of the lyric drama in his day. The opera bore no relation whatever to the national life or thought of the people. It was a mere show designed to catch the applause of the unthinking, to dazzle the ignorant by empty display. In its popular Italian form the music had no genuine connection with the text, for the words were mere pegs on which to hang pretty tunes. These tunes, too, were designed, not to convey to the hearer the emotion of the scene, but to give the singers opportunities to display their powers. The stories of the operas were unpoetic, undramatic, false to truth, incoherent, and not typical. The characters were small and unrepresentative. The opera could not touch the heart of the people because it did not spring from the thought of the people. In Greece the drama, founded as it was on the great mythological legends of the nation, was almost a form of religion; and its influence on the life and thought of the people was tremendous. Wagner's high aim was to produce a species of German opera that should have the same relation to the Germans as the Greek drama had to the Greeks. It is only by bearing in mind this fact that one can account for such works as "Lohengrin," "Tannhäuser," and "Parsifal," on the one hand, and "Der Ring des Nibelungen" on the other. The first three are Wagner's embodiment of the Christian mythology of Germany, with its whole content of the fundamental religious beliefs of the nation. "Der Ring des Nibelungen" is his presentation of the old pagan mythology of his country, with its noblest thoughts pushed to the front and its final retirement before a new order of faith strongly suggested by the last scene of "Die Götterdämmerung."