Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung) is one of the most remarkable achievements in all music, and Siegfried, the third in the cycle, contains some of the greatest moments in Wagner’s entire output. Wagner conceived Siegfried as a heroic ‘man of the future’, and his fantastical tale is one in which the human dramas of treachery and violent struggles for power become magnified in a world of gods, dragons and magic. The previous opera in this cycle, Die Walküre (Naxos NBD0051), was acclaimed in The Guardian as ‘thrillingly vivid… easily maintains the high standard and promise of Das Rheingold’ (Naxos NBD0049).