So Wagner, while conducting other operas in Dresden, began on _Lohengrin_ and finished it in 1847. But he was impetuous and his written articles irritated the people. His ideas were fiery and his musical speech so odd, that even Schumann, who was very sympathetic, only partially understood him or his music. However he did say that Wagner would have a great influence on German opera, but Mendelssohn, after hearing _Tannhäuser_, only liked the second finale. Even his friend Madame Devrient, though she loved and admired him, said: “You are a man of genius but you write such eccentric stuff, it is hardly possible to sing it.” Never did Wagner feel that he was at fault, so great was his faith in his ideas of doing away with arias, of not having stopping places in an opera, just to begin some other song, and of making the words equally important to the music. THE NIBELUNGEN RING While working at _Lohengrin_ he had started his studies of the Icelandic and Germanic Saga, the _Nibelungenlied_. These tales changed under his pen into the story of Siegfried, which he wove into the trilogy known as _The Nibelungen Ring_ or _Trilogy with a Prologue_, as he called it, and as we call it now—_The Tetralogy_ (in four parts). The four dramas of the _Ring of the Nibelung_ are: (1) _The Rhine Gold_ (_Das Rheingold_) (2) _Valkyrie_ (_Die Walküre_) (3) _Siegfried_ (4) _The Twilight of the Gods_ (_Die Götterdämmerung_) Many things happen in these tales but it takes the four to tell the one big story: Alberich the wicked Nibelung, a gnome, in his greed steals the gold from the Rhine Maidens who were guarding it, hidden in the Rhine. They tell him that the one who fashions a ring out of the gold will rule the world, but must forego love. Alberich makes the ring but Wotan the god of the gods wrests it from him. During the drama various people secure the Ring but it had been cursed by Alberich and brings disaster to all who get it. Finally the very gods themselves are doomed to destruction, and Brünnhilde the oldest of the Valkyries, the daughters of Wotan, returns the stolen treasure to the waters of the Rhine. The Wizard has painted in magnificent music the great Rhine River, flowing across the stage; the fire surrounding Brünnhilde until she is rescued by the valiant Siegfried, who knows no fear; Valhalla the home of the gods; the hunt in which Siegfried drinks from the magic horn of memory; and his funeral pyre into which Brünnhilde casts herself and her horse carrying the ring which she has taken from Siegfried’s finger back to the Rhine Maidens from whence it came.