Accentuate the positive

How should you feel at the end of a Ring cycle, before — at any rate if you’re a reviewer — starting to list the pros and cons? Nothing very simple, obviously, but some kind of exaltation, of however confused or complex a kind. Famously Wagner had severe problems with the conclusion to the cycle: in the very first version he had Brünnhilde freeing the Nibelungs, including Alberich, and leading Siegfried and Grane up to Valhalla, where the gods, too, were to survive. Drastic modifications ensued, so that by the time he arrived at the version of the text that he set to music, there is no mention of the poor Nibelungs, Alberich remains the only important character still alive, the gods go up in flames, Siegfried is not revived, and as Brünnhilde urges her horse Grane into the flames, she is in a state of advanced delusion, singing of being married to Siegfried in mightiest love, etc.