Giovanni or the coda to the Leonore overture, with a specifically
contrapuntal theme, points d'orgue, and a high C for the soprano
all complete.

What is more, the work which follows, entitled Night Falls On The
Gods, is a thorough grand opera. In it you shall see what you
have so far missed, the opera chorus in full parade on the stage,
not presuming to interfere with the prima donna as she sings her
death song over the footlights. Nay, that chorus will have its
own chance when it first appears, with a good roaring strain in
C major, not, after all, so very different from, or at all less
absurd than the choruses of courtiers in La Favorita or "Per te
immenso giubilo" in Lucia. The harmony is no doubt a little
developed, Wagner augmenting his fifths with a G sharp where
Donizetti would have put his fingers in his ears and screamed for
G natural. But it is an opera chorus all the same; and along with
it we have theatrical grandiosities that recall Meyerbeer and
Verdi: pezzi d'insieme for all the principals in a row, vengeful
conjurations for trios of them, romantic death song for the
tenor: in short, all manner of operatic conventions.

Now it is probable that some of us will have been so talked by
the more superstitious Bayreuth pilgrims into regarding Die
Gotterdammerung as the mighty climax to a mighty epic, more
Wagnerian than all the other three sections put together, as not
to dare notice this startling atavism, especially if we find the
trio-conjurations more exhilarating than the metaphysical
discourses of Wotan in the three true music dramas of The Ring.
There is, however, no real atavism involved. Die Gotterdammerung,
though the last of The Ring dramas in order of performance, was