Die Walküre
The music contains many wonderful moments.  The most famous bit is the beginning of Act Three where the Valkyries are riding on their horses.  This music is known as The Ride of the Valkyries.  It is very dramatic music.  The very beginning of Act One is also very dramatic.  The music describes a storm.  The orchestra is a very large one, including special tubas which are known as “Wagner tubas”.  There are no separate arias in these operas: all the sections flows into one another.  Sometimes a character has a section when they are telling a story.  There are beautiful sections like the one in Act One where  Siegmund is remembering about his father and the sword, or the love music between Siegmund and Sieglinde.  By using leitmotifs (music which goes with certain ideas or characters) he gets many subtle effects.  When Siegmund looks at the ash tree we hear the sword motive because the sword is in the tree, although at that moment he does not know about it.  We also hear Wotan’s theme when Siegmund talks about his father.  We (the listener) know who his father is, but Siegmund does not.  The music tells us lots of things that the characters in the story may not understand.  This makes the music very powerful and exciting.