Wagner's 'The Siegfried Idyll' is the 'end credits' of the Ring Cycle.

[Aristus]

6. Yeah, there's no getting around that.

When Wotan and Fricka start butting heads in the second act of Die Walkure, and it just goes on and on, I start looking for a way to tunnel out of the opera house.

I can appreciate that Wagner wanted to bring his audience up to speed with what happened in the previous opera, but he takes for too much time with it. Especially considering that by the last opera, he's got three operas to bring us up to speed on.

This makes sense if he actually expected that each opera would have to be able to stand up as a stand-alone performance. But he never intended them for anything other than consecutive performances over four separate evenings. It's a wonder he couldn't respect his audience enough to remember what happened e night before...