Scruton’s main exegesis is that Wagner’s Ring is less a modern creation myth than a spiritual and moral guide to life itself. In telling the story of the downfall of the gods and the sacrifice of their mortal offspring, Wagner is documenting humanity’s most profound attempts to touch the outer extremities of the sacred; not only that, he is teaching us how to die in a post-religious world. It is bold, energising stuff, and entirely in keeping with the scale and ambition of the work. Scruton is right to see in Das Rheingold – the first opera in the cycle, and a prelude to the central story – an artist engaging in the fundamental drives of the human condition rather than a prehistory of the world. ‘In tracing things to a beginning,’ he explains, ‘we are exploring what is first in essence, not what is first in time.’

The opening chapter, titled ‘History and Culture’, stands as one of the finest historical and philosophical contextualisations of an artist’s work since Stephen Greenblatt’s Will in the World (2004). From Hegel and Marx to Feuerbach and the 1848 revolutions that Wagner participated in and was lucky to survive, Scruton tracks the intellectual lineage of the Ring. He also manages to deftly weave in the artistic and aesthetic evolution of the work – from Greek tragedy to Norse myth and the Brothers Grimm – with a self-assurance that is often dazzling. This chapter is then followed by a detailed summary of the plot of each opera, an exhaustive and sometimes exhausting unpicking of the narrative action. It can feel labyrinthine even for those familiar with the works, but this is the clay from which Scruton extrapolates and moulds his theory.

The book is full of surprising insights and illuminating interpretative flourishes, largely drawn from ideas Scruton has prosecuted over his many decades of public discourse: he is excellent on the nature of resentment that drives the character of Alberich, something he previously discussed in relation to totalitarianism in A Political Philosophy: Arguments for conservatism (2006). He also has complex and nuanced things to say about the nature of law and contract in relation to the character of Wotan. Even when he turns his attention to Brünnhilde, he is largely sympathetic and enlightening, given his often controversial positions on feminism and sexuality in the past. He sees her not as ‘an idealised woman, but an ideal woman. She is the incarnation of a femininity prepared in the realm of pure ideals’.

Roger Scruton (photograph by Pete Helme)This is true of the character as she appears in Die Walküre, the godhead who steps down into mortality, but it holds less sway in the subsequent operas. Scruton seems to teeter on the cusp of outright sexism when it comes to Brünnhilde’s experience of mortal love and betrayal, as if he is unwilling to countenance her wrath and need for revenge, even given the circumstances of her rape and ruin. He comes closest to outright offence with this: ‘Among the great artists none was more determined than Wagner to remind us that ... men are under an obligation to idealise and protect the women whom they desire, and that shame – shame of the body – is the woman’s primary form of protection and the deep expression of her will.’ That any writer could recover from this excruciating paternalism is something of a miracle, but Scruton does go on to mitigate – if not quite ameliorate – his painfully outmoded view of the feminine. He emphasises another of Wagner’s preoccupations: the need for sacred things in a world that can conceive of the death of gods. His description of Brünnhilde’s immolation on the funeral pyre is frankly beautiful, its justification more convincing than that of Nietzsche or Shaw.

Scruton is such a confident guide into the world of Wagner’s Ring – musically, textually, philosophically – that it is sometimes hard for the reader to extract their own perspective amongst all the highly astute, occasionally off-colour, observances. This is the danger in following a philosopher’s passion: they have a tendency to override your own, even in the act of describing. The Ring of Truth succeeds because of the monumental greatness of the source material as much as the supple, subjective responses the author brings to it.