WHAT IS THE RING?
The Ring, as it has come to be called, is a vast and unique masterpiece. It is a series of four operas, or one opera in four parts, meant to be performed on successive nights in an extraordinary “festival” atmosphere. Any way you look at it, the Ring is probably the longest chunk of music and/or drama ever put before an audience. It is certainly one of the best. There is nothing remotely like it.
So what is the Ring? In one sentence, it is a German Romantic view of Norse and Teutonic myth influenced by Greek tragedy and a Buddhistic sense of destiny told with a sociopolitical deconstruction of contemporary society, a psychological study of motivation and action, and a blueprint for a new approach to music and theater. Phew! It’s a wonder it only lasts four days! Believe me, the preceding sentence is calm compared to most summaries of the Ring.
Everything that can be said about a work of art has been said about the Ring. This is because the Ring saga, like any truly great work of art, has as many meanings as there are people to interpret. It has been seen as a justification for governments and a condemnation of them. It speaks to traditionalists and forward-thinkers. It is distinctly German and profoundly pannational. It is the basis of most analyses of Wagner, and the most “conceptualized” theater piece in history. It provides a lifetime of study for musicologists and thrilling entertainment for the tone-deaf. It is an adventure for all who approach it.
In the last generation or so, people have also discovered that the Ring is not quite as scary as it was once thought to be. As recently as 1961, George Martin was able to say bluntly that the Ring was not for the casual operagoer. All this has changed. Perhaps television and in-house translations have helped. Perhaps it’s because anybody with an interest in theater sooner or later hears about this piece as the ultimate goal of any director or designer. Perhaps we need fewer explanations about the famous leitmotivs that form the basis of the music, since we are well trained by our media to register a response to a snippet of music (think of the shark theme in Jaws). Or perhaps people are just less willing to believe that they’re not “smart” enough to get it. For, while the Ring is an inexhaustible resource for inquiry into virtually every subject, there is nothing to “get” except awesome theater. George Bernard Shaw, a famous fan of this work, and one who had plenty to say about its deeper meanings, summed it up best. After freely confessing himself to be a “superior person” for whom the Ring “has a most urgent and searching philosophical and social significance,” Shaw offers an encouragement to “modest citizens who may suppose themselves to be disqualified from enjoying the Ring by their technical ignorance of music. They may dismiss such misgivings speedily and confidently. There is not a single note of ‘classical music’ in the Ring—not a note of it has any other point than the single direct point of giving musical expression to the drama.”
DAS RHEINGOLD
PREMIERE: MUNICH, 1869
THE NAME
What to call it Basically Rheingold will do, unless you’re being quite formal, in which case you can add the Das. Calling it The Rhinegold went out of style fifty years ago.
How to pronounce it This is a more delicate issue. If you are saying it in English, and spelling it “Rhinegold,” there is no problem. If you are attempting German, make sure to give the first R a healthy glottal fricative, which is that back-of-the-throat sound Scots make with the word loch or French with the word arriver. Only then is it advisable to add the article Das.
WHAT IS DAS RHEINGOLD?
Das Rheingold is the Vorabend (“fore-evening,” or “prologue”) to the Ring. It is by far the shortest of the four Ring operas, about two and a quarter hours long, but it was written to be performed without a break. Besides being the shortest, Rheingold is also in many ways the brainiest Ring opera, and also the chattiest. It sets forth the moral, philosophical, dramatic, and musical issues of the saga, and relies heavily on a sort of conversational tone to do so. In some ways, it is the least familiar part of the Ring. There are no “set pieces” in Rheingold that can be separated from the whole and played on the radio or in the concert hall, nothing akin to “The Ride of the Valkyries,” the “Forest Murmurs,” or “Siegfried’s Funeral,” found in each of the subsequent works. Except for Loge’s spiel about the value of love, there are no real narrations or monologues such as those we find so frequently, and at such length, in the rest of the Ring.
Rheingold is primarily a series of dialogues and confrontations interspersed with brief, shattering musical effects. The Prelude, the first glow of the gold, Wotan’s dreams of Valhalla, the descent into Nibelheim, Alberich’s call to the Nibelungs, and the finale are as original and as easy to appreciate on first hearing as anything in Wagner.
Which is not to suggest that the rest of Rheingold is dull. On the contrary, a good performance of it will leave you almost breathless with its magnificent sweep. Musicians particularly admire it, and first-timers are usually surprised at how much they have enjoyed it. It is quite easy to follow, since most of the leitmotivs, the much-discussed themes of the Ring, are laid out in the course of this story. In other words, we see the gold—we hear its “theme;” Alberich curses the Ring using the Curse of the Ring theme, and so on. In the subsequent operas, these themes will be used to refer to people, things, and events that actually occur in this opera.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
WOTAN (bass-baritone or bass) The unofficial, but undisputed, chief of the gods. The gods, as we find out, are neither all-powerful nor all-knowing, though they can put on a good show when they want to. Wotan is ambitious for power and not above compromising his own high ethics to get it. His rule, precarious as it is, is based on law and contracts, symbolized by carvings on the shaft of the Spear, which he carries everywhere. He also wears an eye patch, and has several different stories to explain this.
FRICKA (mezzo-soprano) Wotan’s wife, and the goddess of marriage. Poor Fricka basically just wants a nice home with a husband who stays there. Did she ever marry the wrong guy! The prosaic wife who cannot understand her husband’s ideals (to say nothing of his affairs) is a theme from Greek and Roman mythology; it’s also how Wagner liked to think of his own first wife.
FREIA (soprano) The goddess of flora, harvest, immortality, and other such stuff. Freia is ever-young, beautiful, desirable, and doesn’t have a whole lot to say here other than “Help!” She is also known as Holda.
DONNER (baritone) The thunder god, who walks around with a large hammer, usually looking ridiculous.
FROH (tenor) The god of spring.
LOGE (tenor) The god of fire and trickery. Yes, you read that right. Every ancient culture has a sort of divine “trickster,” and Loge is the slippery and wily one here. Loge is considered quite second-class by all the gods except Wotan, who needs his abilities. He dwells apart from the other gods.
ALBERICH (bass) A Nibelung, or dwarf, who lives primarily under the earth.
MIME (tenor) Another Nibelung, and Alberich’s brother, although they are distinctly lacking in filial affection.
FAFNER (bass) Abig, sweaty, coarse giant who fears Nibelungs and envies the gods.
FASOLT (bass) Fafner’s brother giant, equally big, sweaty, and coarse, but with an odd romantic streak in him that proves his undoing.
ERDA (contralto) The all-knowing Earth Mother, also known as the Wala.
THE THREE RHINEMAIDENS Three water-nymph sisters who have one job in life, and can’t do it. Their father is the River Rhine, in whose waters they live, play, and flirt.
WOGLINDE (soprano), WELLGUNDE (soprano), FLOSSHILDE (mezzo-soprano).
THE OPERA
Prelude and Scene 1
Setting: The depths of the Rhine River.
Woglinde is swimming through the river, singing first nonsense words and then of the rollicking waves of water. She is joined by her sister Wellgunde, and they frolic together. Their sister, Flosshilde, joins them and gently chides them that they are guarding the gold poorly, and they’d be sorry if someone stole
it.
Immediately there appears an ugly snarling dwarf named Alberich sliming around the riverbed. Flosshilde tells her sisters to be on guard. Father (the Rhine) has warned them of such an enemy. The three Rhinemaidens, as they are called, ask the dwarf what he wants. He says how he would love to enfold their little forms in his arms. Flosshilde laughs at her own fears. The enemy is in love! Woglinde, to teach him a lesson, beckons him, but the ooze of the riverbed makes him slip and sneeze. She darts up and down, always staying just out of his reach. Wellgunde advises the poor dwarf to forget the teasing Woglinde and come to her instead. He approaches her with expressions of love and lust. She has a look at him, and tells him in detail how ugly he is. Flosshilde reproaches her sisters for their frivolity. Isn’t the dwarf handsome? She and Alberich exchange tender expressions from a distance until she, too, dismisses him as ugly and croaking. He wails of the pain the Rhinemaidens cause him with their deceptions, but they insist they are without any fraud at all. They would be true to any man who could catch and hold them! He chases them in vain around the river while they swim away and laugh at him.
A glow penetrates the waters, and there is a dazzling gleam of gold on the top of a rock. The sisters comment on its beauty, and sing of the magnificent Rhinegold. They joyfully invite the dwarf to join in its praise. Alberich cynically says their golden water toy would be of no use to him, but Woglinde says he’d be more in awe of it if he knew its wonders. Wellgunde explains that whoever would make a ring out of the Rhinegold would win all the world’s wealth and power. Flosshilde advised caution, since they are to guard it against thieves, but Woglinde retorts that only he who would swear to forfeit love forever could fashion the gold into a ring. No one will give up love—least of all this horny little gnome! They insist he laugh and sing with them. He threatens them instead. They panic as they realize love has made him crazy. Alberich mounts the rock, declares to the waves that he curses love, and steals the gold. The Rhinemaidens wail and cry for help.
Comment: The Prelude to Rheingold is one of the most celebrated “coups” in musical theater, and detailed analyses of it abound. Basically, it is 136 bars of E-flat “unpacked” into a swirl of life in a single crescendo. The mood shifts, as does the key, when the first voice is heard. Nonsense words begin the vocalizing, followed by alliterative speech and then dialogue. It is a musical depiction of creation, from formless void to humanoid interaction. This great sweep of music is not heard on the radio or in the concert hall, since it is part of a story rather than a story in itself.
Everybody loves the Rhinemaidens’ scene and always has, despite the obvious difficulties in staging it. For one thing, it is supremely lyrical and lies pleasantly in the voice. Also, the Rhinemaidens are the only remotely fun creatures we are to meet in the Ring, even if they are rather ditzy. Commentators generally cite them as representing primal innocence. George Bernard Shaw saw them plainly as tarts. Wagner used the term “eternal feminine” to describe them, an important concept in Goethe and others. The beauty of this term is that it encompasses the entire spectrum of male projections of women.
Some critics have cited this scene as an example of Wagner at his most uneconomical. Alberich must be wooed and rejected first by one Rhinemaiden, then the next, and finally the last, repeating the process each time. He certainly could have made the same statement merely once and been done with it, but it seems clear that Wagner was enjoying the time spent with these three and their pretty music. Audiences enjoy it too, and no one ever complains that this scene is too long.
By the way, don’t waste any time wondering how a dwarf is walking around the bottom of a river. This is myth, you see, and there will be far greater strains on your credulity as the cycle continues.
Scene 2
Setting: A mountaintop clearing.
Wotan, the king of the gods, and his consort Fricka lie sleeping. Fricka awakens and bids her husband wake up. He mutters in his sleep about power and glory. He declares the eternal work completed—the gods’ superb mountaintop stronghold is built! Fricka asks if he has forgotten the price he agreed to pay for the new homeher beautiful sister Freia. He dismisses that as inconsequential, causing her to gasp at his loveless frivolity, and remind him that the women were kept away from the meeting when Wotan contracted with the giants to build the proud structure, for which he bartered away Freia. What, she asks pungently, is holy to you hard men when you go after power? Didn’t Fricka herself beg me for this building? he retorts. Yes, she answers, she wanted a home, a lordly abode that might tempt her wandering, cheating husband to stay home, but all he could envision was a fortress to increase his power. Wotan says that no home can keep him from wandering in search of variety—he will not surrender that sport! Loveless man, she exclaims, who can so glibly gamble a woman’s love and value for power! He responds that he values women too much for his wife’s comfort rather than too little, and reminds her that he gave up one of his eyes to marry her. As for Freia, he has no intention of surrendering her to the giants, and never had.
Just then, Freia rushes on stage, begging protection from the giants who are even now chasing her to carry her away. Wotan distractedly asks her if she hasn’t seen Loge, the trickster god of fire, who promised to find some loophole in the agreement. Fricka is annoyed that Wotan should have put so much trust in the mercurial Loge, who is nothing but a liar, but Wotan says the situation demanded cunning.
Comment: Wotan’s character is well defined by the stately and impressive music that accompanies his first appearance. His dreams of Valhalla, the yet-unnamed castle lurking in the foggy background, are beautiful but slightly pathetic. Wotan desperately wants to believe that his new home will give him everything he desires: security, status, and power. His wife sees things differently and perhaps more realistically. Fricka is often played as a nagging Hausfrau, which is reductive. She always makes a remarkable amount of sense, and it’s pretty clear that life as Mrs. Wotan is not a breeze. The issue at stake in this part of Scene 2 is the balance of love and power, a theme that colors the whole of the Ring.
The giants Fafner and Fasolt come lumbering on, demanding payment for the building of Wotan’s fortress. Fine, says the king of the gods, name your price. Fasolt asks him if he has forgotten that he already pledged Freia as payment for the castle. Wotan replies that the giants must be off their heads. Freia is not for sale, and they should name another price. Fasolt bluntly accuses Wotan of treachery. The marks of solemn compact carved into Wotan’s Spear—symbol and embodiment of his great but finite power—do they mean nothing to him? Fasolt warns Wotan to beware of breaking his agreement, since Wotan is only what he is by virtue of contracts. Wotan says that the giants should never have taken literally what was said only in jest. What use is the fair Freia to brutes like them? Fasolt, rather obviously love-struck, says they merely want what every male wants—a lovely woman to abide with them. Fafner, the more cynical of the two, says that he personally cares very little for owning Freia. The real pleasure comes in depriving the gods of her, for without the golden apples that she alone can produce in her garden, the gods’ youth and beauty will fade. They will age and die, and the time of their power will pass, so let her be taken! He orders Freia to follow them. Her brothers Donner, god of thunder, and Froh, god of spring, arrive to defend her, but Wotan stops them from intervening, compelled by the contract-attesting marks on the shaft of the Spear. Just then, Loge appears.
Comment: Poor Freia doesn’t get a whole lot to do in this opera. While the other “auxiliary” gods Donner and Froh each get some impressive music to sing toward the end of Scene 4, Freia doesn’t even get to sing her own leitmotiv. Most of the time she runs around the stage like a bimbo crying “Help!” while chased by two hulking, sweaty giants (the opportunities for sarcastic humor here are sometimes too much for directors to resist). The clodding chords that accompany the entrance of the giants, which are quoted by Richard Strauss in his opera Ariadne auf Naxos to accompany the boneheaded Major-Domo, are impressive
, but the real masterstroke is the touchingly lyrical music for Fasolt. Despite his gross appearance, the guy just wants a pretty bride. He is a sort of proto–King Kong.
Wotan is annoyed at Loge’s tardiness, and asks him what he has found as a substitute for Freia. Loge defensively answers that he could not do the impossible. Fricka gets in a dig at Wotan for having trusted Loge, and Donner and Froh add their snide comments. But Wotan insists Loge’s wiles are even better when he delays in revealing them. The giants demand immediate action without delays, and Wotan orders Loge to produce something.
Pretending to be hurt by Wotan’s ingratitude, Loge tells all that he has searched on earth, in the water, and in the air, but nowhere has he found a power greater than woman’s beauty. There was, however, a single exception. The Rhinemaidens told him how the Nibelung, “Night-Alberich,” rejected in his advances, took revenge by stealing their gold, and now prizes it above all things, including love. The Rhinemaidens asked Loge to intercede with Wotan, that he might return their gold to them. Wotan calls Loge either mad or malicious. He is in trouble himself. How can he help the Rhinemaidens? The giants grudge Alberich the gold, since he has already caused them plenty of problems. But what power does this gold give him? Loge evasively says that a ring made of the gold would give its owner supreme power. Wotan has heard of this, and Fricka asks what power the Ring would give a woman. Loge explains that a woman who owned the Ring could keep her husband faithful. She and Wotan agree that the Ring would be good to have, but Loge tells them they’d have to renounce love to gain the power, and neither of them would do that. Besides, they’re too late. Alberich didn’t hesitate to curse love—the Ring and its power are already his!
Wagner Without Fear Page 23