The supposition of such influence is favoured by some critics (Tyler, Plumptre, Palm, Siegfried, Cheyne in his Jewish Religious Life after the Exile, and others), rejected by some (Zeller, Renan, Kleinert and others).
Meantime Der Ring des Nibelungen was rapidly approaching completion, and on the 13th of August 1876 the introductory portion, Das Rheingold, was performed at Bayreuth for the first time as part of the great whole, followed on the 14th by Die Walkiire, on the 16th by Siegfried and on the 17th by Geitterdiimmerung.
The more subtle examples are inexhaustible in variety and resource; and perhaps the climax of subtlety is the almost entire absence of Leitmotif in the first scene of the third act of Gotterddmmerung, when Siegfried throws away his last chance of averting his doom.
Siegfried is piqued, and calls them back to offer them the ring.
Almost as subtle, and much more directly impressive, is the pathos of the death of Siegfried, which is heightened by an unprecedented appeal to a sense of musical form on the scale of the entire tetralogy.