Steven Brown

No doubt about it, the big event of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s coming season arrives near the start: Music director Fabio Luisi and company, going where no U.S. orchestra has gone in decades, will perform Richard Wagner’s epic The Ring of the Nibelung.

If you take it at face value, it’s an epic tale of gods and gnomes, fighting over a gold ring that confers supreme power over the world. But there’s a more compelling way to look at The Ring of the Nibelung, Richard Wagner’s four-opera cycle.