With its long history as a central point within the Hanseatic League, Hamburg has always been a hard-working metropolis. Built from centuries of trade and business, it's not a place of landed aristocracy and princes, like so many other parts of Germany.

Hamburg applies a cerebral "roll-up-the-sleeves" approach to business and culture. You won't spot a castle or a moat or even an oversized ego in this town, as it's the work that counts in this port city. High-quality substance is valued over prima-donna celebrity.

That sensibility drives the work ethic of the bands toiling on the Reeperbahn as much as it does the longshoremen in the busy harbor on the Elbe River, and it finds its reflection in the artistic vision of the Hamburg State Opera , home to the the Hamburg Philharmonic and the first public opera house in all of Germany. Indeed, the opera company's aesthetic is driven by hard work and consummate professionalism on the one hand and accessibility to a larger audience than the standard opera crowd on the other.

The Hamburg State Opera has numerous initiatives in place to teach kids about the operatic arts by putting together children's productions ("Opera Piccola") and it also offers a range of ticket prices, many quite affordable in an auditorium where there really isn't a bad seat. On its Website, it tags its approach as "opera for the people," and that is reflected in the work and the overall unpretentiousness of the physical opera house itself.

That is what brought us to Hamburg again last year. We attended the October premiere of Richard Wagner's "Siegfried," part of the ambitious, four-part "Ring" ("Der Ring des Nibelungen") cycle that Hamburg is in the process of staging.

While we were there, we also got a sneak preview of the Hamburg Philharmonic Hall -- a vision of billowing sails captured in undulating, high-tech glass that is under construction in the HafenCity in the center of town along the Elbe. Our visit found us wearing rubber boots and hard hats, standing ankle-deep in chilly water, littered with rusty nails, cigarette butts and other detritus of a work in progress. This was the new Philharmonic Hall in gestation; still unformed, but well enough along that we easily saw its final shape. We stood where the orchestra will be seated and looked at the rising, waving walls growing around us.

A hard-working city

If Hamburg were a character, it would not be unlike Richard Wagner himself, who was largely self-taught and hard-working. His vision encompassed not only the musical interpretation of ancient Norse and Germanic myths into the music we know as the "Ring" but, like a filmmaker, he conceived of the entire production -- costumes, staging, while also penning all the librettos for his music. Wagner developed the concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk, a complete work of art drawing many artistic mediums into one new and unified whole.

Even those who've never been to a "Ring" opera probably know some of the music well. They've heard variations of it in "Star Wars" and numerous other popular films, especially in the sci-fi genre. "Siegfried" is the third opera in the four-opera "Ring" cycle (and the first story composed by Wagner). It's but one short step from the thrilling score of a "Star Wars" movie and its seductive big screen to the joy of live performance by an entire company of singers and musicians and the transporting experience of theater -- that exquisite, highly skilled yet raw expression that is opera.

It's fitting, too, that Hamburg State Opera's artistic and musical director, Simone Young, is largely a self-made woman. The Australian pianist came to music relatively late, at age 15. Young is not of a privileged, musical family, but was self-motivated to study piano.

Siegfried's story of an unwitting hero who saves us from gods driven by the desire for power, is well suited for Hamburg. The port city in central Europe is built on muscle, might, with a brainy sensibility, a city that eyes the future and all the opportunities that can be drawn, persuaded, wrested from it. In all stories -- whether of cities or the retelling of ancient myths -- there are heroes, but it is the story itself that carries throughout time; the story merits new tellings, new interpretations. No doubt Wagner, and the founders of Hamburg, would agree.