If you want to enjoy the Song of the Nibelungs, you must try to do one thing: forget Wagner. His music drama Der Ring der Nibelungen is such an overwhelming aesthetic experience—he was only slightly exaggerating when he claimed to have composed a Gesamtkunstwerk, a “total work of art”—that it has inevitably eclipsed the medieval saga on which it was based.

Yet Das Nibelungenlied is a remarkable work of art in its own right. Among medieval epics, it occupies the first rank, transcending even Beowulf and the Chanson de Roland in complexity and emotional intensity. Only Homer surpasses the lay of the Nibelungen in tragic grandeur. And its influence is ubiquitous—one need only mention the notable medievalist J. R. R. Tolkien, whose Lord of the Rings owes at least as much to the original poem as to Wagner’s reworking.

If you want to enjoy the Song of the Nibelungs, you must try to do one thing: forget Wagner.

What of the story itself? It falls naturally into two halves, reflecting its origins in two distinct traditions. The first part tells the story of Sifried, King of the Netherlands, a mighty warrior and dragonslayer. Using magic, he impersonates the Burgundian Gunther, King of the Rhineland, to woo the Amazonian Brunhild, in return for Gunther’s sister, Krimhild. Later, the two queens quarrel and Hagen, one of Gunther’s retainers, plots to kill Sifried on a hunting