Ring cycle day four: every one of my preconceptions has been proved wrong

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Sara Mohr-Pietsch realises you don't need to be an expert to tackle Wagner's Ring cycle

It took God six days to create the world. In just seven, Richard Wagner (with a little help from Daniel Barenboim) has managed to create it and destroy it. From the primordial prelude to Das Rheingold on Monday to the collapse of Valhalla last night, the Ring cycle is finally at an end, and what a journey it has been.

In a BBC Proms Insight event last Sunday (which feels like months ago), Tom Service described the Ring as ending with an open question, a gauntlet for mankind: now the gods have dwindled and our heroes lie dead on the pyre, what will we make of the world we've inherited?

It's a great question, and I'm sure I'll come to it, but it's not what's ringing in my ears. Right now, they are full of music, and I hope they stay that way for some time. Because it's Wagner music above all else that has had a profound and, dare I say, life-changing effect on me.

The final opera in the cycle, Götterdämmerung, was the best of the lot. High-octane, exhilarating, it charged through its trajectory at breakneck speed, so that the two-hour opening act felt like no time at all. It's a grand opera of emotions to match, and the biggest of them belong to Brünnhilde. Betrayed by her beloved, it is she who ends up saving the day, laying the murdered Siegfried on a funeral pyre and riding her horse in after him in a defiant act of self-immolation, at the same time returning the Ring to its rightful home at the bottom of the Rhine. She is a deeply impressive character for a composer I've heard described as a musical misogynist, and was once again magnificently sung by Nina Stemme.

Looking back over the whole experience, it's satisfying to realise that seven days ago, a newcomer, I was put off by the Ring's gargantuan proportions, coterie of nerds and echoes of Nazi appropriation. Now, I'm completely won over.

The length, after all, is no big deal. It turns out to be quite rewarding, setting aside 16 hours of your life to sink into astonishing music, particularly when performed with the vigour, insight and commitment of the Berlin Staatskapelle and superlative cast.

What's more, the music has aged in oak casks since Das Rheingold. Even though we get a recap of many of the first opera's motifs – and a return of the Rhinemaidens – this score is better, more mature. In Götterdämmerung, the leitmotifs no longer blurt out their secrets in broad daylight; they are subtle, flickering, layered one upon the other, building into great clusters of meaning and disappearing half-said. In the final moments of the opera we reach the orchestral culmination of the 16-hour journey: everything has its music, from the Rhine bursting its banks, to Valhalla up in flames and the triumph of redemptive love, and it's all happening at once.

It may sound like I've become a leitmotif nerd, a trainspotter of themes, but I've discovered you don't need to be an expert to tackle the Ring; all you need to do is listen to the operas in sequence, and the leitmotifs and dense mythology work their way into your system. By the end, every nuance is yours for the taking: it's a surprisingly democratic art-form which needs no expertise or elitism for effect.

And as for the issue of anti-Semitism, I didn't find Alberich or Mime (the gold-hungry dwarves) any more offensive than Shylock, and you won't find me avoiding The Merchant of Venice because I'm Jewish. Even Barenboim (who's adamant there's no anti-Semitism in the Ring) addressing the audience during the final thunderous applause, made a quip about describing the orchestra's outgoing leader Wolf-Dieter Batzdorf as "Konzertmeister" rather than the English "leader" - which of course translates back into German as "Führer".

In his closing speech, Barenboim also spoke of the communion between musicians and public which had manifested so magically in this Ring experience. I don't have anything to compare it to, but I suspect the Proms audience made this one just that little bit more special than your average staging. Then again, maybe there is no such thing as your average Ring. It's an experience like no other, one to dive into with the gusto of Brünnhilde as she leaps onto Grane and rides into the flames.

Outside the Albert Hall, I met a woman flogging a pair of tickets to the Ring in Bayreuth for a mere couple of thousand pounds. Bank balance aside, I would have jumped at the chance, if not for the fact the performances are in August, and I need time for this all to settle and digest. Give me a couple of years, though, and I'll be back for more.