Image of the Day

Josef Hoffmann - Mime's Forge

Today is the anniversary of the premiere of Richard Wagner's Siegfried, the third opera in his great masterwork Der Ring des Nibelungen in 1876.

Wagner commissioned the popular historical landscape painter, Josef Hoffmann to design sketches for each scene, which were in turn passed on to set designers Gotthold and Bruckner and adapted into stage designs for the original Bayreuth performances.

Epic in scale and grandeur, Hoffmann's designs became the benchmark for Wagnerian scenery well into the Twentieth Century.  Here is Act One of Siegfried, an exquisite depiction of Siegfried at Mime's forge.