If you can't wait the few days left until the January 27 debut of Robert Lepage's new production of the Wagner's epic "Götterdämmerung" at New York's Metropolitan Opera (the conclusion of the so-called "Ring Cycle"), you may want to hurry on over to the institution's attached art venue, the Gallery Met. A suite of new images by ultra-hot contemporary painter Dana Schutz is now on view, the work having been specifically created for the event to celebrate the hallowed work of opera. The works include black-and-white ink drawings as well as six large colorful monotypes, all in Schutz's characteristic fractured nouveau Cubist style. The show is Gallery Met director Dodie Kazanjian's fourth contemporary art homage on Wagner, after shows from Peter Doig, Julie Mehretu, and Elizabeth Peyton.

Spoiler alert! One semi-abstract image captures the climactic leap of the opera's heroine Brünnhilde into a funeral pyre in the final moments of "Götterdämmerung." "Brünnhilde is a fascinating character, very powerful but conflicted. She takes the whole world down, as well as herself,” Schutz explains in the exhibition's press release. "There's so much in the Ring: Rhinemaidens, a dragon, incest — even the world in flames!"

To see images from Dana Schutz's "Götterdämmerung" at Gallery Met, click on the slide show.