A is for Alberich, the vertically challenged, sex-crazed villain whose theft of the gold at the beginning of Das Rheingold – the prelude to the Ring Cycle – triggers a train of deranged events, which concludes four evenings and 15 hours later with the destruction of the realm of the gods, the creation of a new world of imperfect humanity, and the restoration of the gold to the Rhinemaidens.
The character is based on the dwarf of the same name in the German medieval epic poem The Song of the Nibelungs, overlaid with elements from the Norse sagas. Alberich is a Nibelung and dwells in Nibelheim, which most modern productions locate somewhere in the West Midlands. He has a brother called Mime, who is easily the most boring character in the Ring Cycle (Das Rheingold is followed in the sequence by Die Walküre, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung). Whenever Mime appears, take a toilet break.
Alberich might be more interesting than his steelworker brother, but we still await a truly challenging production that makes his pursuit of power – and willingness to renounce love in its pursuit – a noble and heroic act. No doubt it will come. Alberich also has a son called Hagen who is, if anything, even dodgier than his dad. Hagen makes his own bid to get hold of the supposedly power-giving ring forged from the Rheingold in Götterdämmerung, and meets a satisfyingly watery end. Oddly, Wagner fails to tell us what happens to Alberich, who, despite being responsible for all the Tarantinoesque mayhem, is the only character left standing by the end. Either his survival represents the continuance of evil in the new world or, more likely, it was an oversight by the composer, who had spent 25 exhausting years working on the Ring Cycle, mainly writing it backwards.
A is also for antisemitism, of which Wagner was unquestionably guilty (the philosopher Theodor Adorno saw Alberich as an antisemitic stereotype), and Apocalypse Now, the Francis Ford Coppola film that used Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries theme to lacerating effect.