[2] It was published as an appendix to Wagner's essay The Art-Work of the Future as an example of the ideals to which such art-works should aspire - "a glorious Saga which long ago the raw, uncultured Folk of old-time Germany indited for no other reason than that of inner, free, Necessity".
[3] The libretto contains many elements which are found in other of Wagner's operas (a swan, a wound, a spear, a ring, smithying, an absent mysterious father, a forbidden question), and one biographer calls it 'one of Wagner's most frankly autobiographic libretti'.
[5] The composer Siegmund von Hausegger wrote the symphonic elaboration of the unperformed opera libretto in 1904, which he refers to as the "allegory of the attainment of creative powers".
Swanhilde is the daughter of a marriage between a mortal woman and a fairy king, who forbids his wife to ask about his origins; on her asking him he vanishes.
But wounded by a spear, Swanhilde falls to earth and is rescued by the master-craftsman Wieland, and marries him, putting aside her wings and her magic ring of power.