Wagner Without Fear

by William Berger

  Such work will not go unrewarded. Die Walküre makes a great first impression, and then keeps getting better with every hearing. Despite its mythical world of gods, Valkyries, and heroes, this opera has a good claim to be the most human one Wagner ever wrote.

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  WOTAN (bass or bass-baritone) Our chief god is somewhat wiser by Walküre, though no closer to serenity.

  FRICKA (mezzo-soprano) The goddess of marriage is still trying to create a manageable home life, and farther than ever from her goal. In this opera, Fricka plays the role of a moral compass to Wotan, as well as a nagging wife.

  SIEGMUND (tenor) One of the two twins Wotan fathered on a mortal woman while calling himself Wälse (the twins are thus known as the Wälsungs or Volsungs). Siegmund has grown up alone and at odds from the society of other men. This is one of Wagner’s most sympathetic creations, though not through anything he actually says or does.

  SIEGLINDE (soprano) Siegmund’s twin sister, the other Volsung.

  BRÜNNHILDE (soprano) Wotan’s favorite among the Valkyries, the warrior maidens he fathered on Erda.

  HUNDING (bass) A great big lout of a man who married Sieglinde after she was abducted by his kinsmen. Notwithstanding these unattractive qualities, Hunding is about the only character in the whole Ring who can keep his word of honor.

  THE VALKYRIES (sopranos and mezzo-sopranos)

  GERHILDE, ORTLINDE, WALTRAUTE, SCHWERTLEITE, HELMWIGE, SIEGRUNE, GRIMGERDE, ROSSWEISSE

  THE OPERA

  Act I

  Setting: The interior of Hunding’s large but primitive house, built around the trunk and branches of an ash tree. A fire is burning in the hearth. A large, rough door is upstage.

  A brief prelude depicts a man running through a storm. Siegmund, exhausted, opens the door, exclaiming, “Whoever owns this house, I must rest here!” He collapses in front of the fireplace.

  Comment: The cellos and basses play a repeating rhythmic figure to portray Siegmund’s flight. This is punctuated by the brass, which blares Donner’s thunder motif from Das Rheingold. Commentators, who can be so dreadfully literal, inform us that this signifies the thunder of a storm through which Siegmund is running. Well, yes, of course it does, but there’s more to it than that. We have, in theory, just heard Das Rheingold the night before we are hearing this, and our most recent memory is the magnificent entrance of the gods into Valhalla. The thunder motif is more a symbol and reminder of the gods’ grandeur than a specific indicator of weather conditions. Siegmund is here associated with that godliness, but imperfectly, as befits his half-human nature. The thunder motif is unchanged in itself but its surrounding orchestration is entirely different. In Das Rheingold, it was stately, unadorned, regal, and imperious. Here it is supported by repeating rhythms impelling it forward. We have left the ethereal realm of the gods and arrived at the plane of humanity, with all its complications.

  The Prelude and Siegmund’s sudden entrance and collapse are a powerful and excellent opening for an opera that is both an entity in itself and one in a series. It is also one of theater’s most successful expressions of that old idea “It was a dark and stormy night …”

  Sieglinde enters, wondering who the stranger is on her hearth. He tosses and turns and gasps for water, which she brings. They gaze at each other with sympathy, tenderness, and perhaps recognition. He drinks, his eyes never leaving hers, and asks who she is. She answers that both the house and its woman are Hunding’s property. The guest may stay until Hunding returns. Siegmund agrees, saying that a wounded, weaponless guest will not give her husband any cause for alarm. Concerned, she asks to see his wounds, but he dismisses them as minor, further explaining that he never would have run away from battle except that his shield and his spear were smashed. She offers him a hornful of mead, which he refuses until she tastes it first. They drink, staring ever deeper into each other, until he gets up to leave. Misfortune always follows him, and he doesn’t want to bring any on her. Then stop, she tells him. He cannot bring misfortune into the home of misfortune. “I call myself Sorrowful,” he says. He will wait for Hunding. They continue to stare at each other with growing emotion.

  Comment: The immediate bond between Siegmund and Sieglinde is expressed superbly in the orchestra. Their words, throughout this act, sometimes make them difficult to love, but the gorgeous music while they gaze at each other puts us firmly on their side. The first theme, played by a solo cello, is particularly admired by experts and ordinary listeners alike. It will expand later in the act as their passion explodes.

  They hear Hunding approach. Sieglinde opens the door, and Hunding enters sternly. This stranger needed shelter, she says. “Did you provide for him?” he asks his wife. Yes. Siegmund says that Hunding wouldn’t scold his wife for giving him shelter. Hunding impressively asserts that his hearth is sacred—let his home be sacred to the guest. He hands his armor to his wife, and orders her to serve supper, noting to himself how alike she and the stranger are. He asks the stranger where he comes from. Siegmund replies that he does not know where he is, much less where he was. Hunding tells his name, and explains that all the rich surrounding lands belong to his kinsmen, who protect his honor. Now, won’t the stranger tell his story … if not to him, then at least to his wife, who is so obviously interested? Embarrassed, she admits that she would like to know more. Siegmund begins his story.

  Comment: Hunding’s stentorian theme, blasted by the brass, is slightly reminiscent of the giants’ in Das Rheingold, only rather more impressive. Hunding is not related to the giants, except perhaps spiritually and as an enemy of Wotan’s world vision. The tension throughout this scene tells us the real conflict between Hunding and Siegmund is one of clashing natures.

  Siegmund says that he can call himself neither “Peaceful” nor “Joyful,” but must call himself “Sorrowful.” His father was called “Wolf,” but he hardly knew his mother or his twin sister. One day, he was out hunting with his warlike father, and they returned home to find their house burned down, the mother slaughtered, and the sister vanished and presumably burned in the flames. He escaped the nameless enemies with his father. They lived for many years in the woods, always defending themselves and escaping their enemies. He became known as the “Wolf Cub.”

  Hunding comments that he has heard dark rumors of such a pair. Sieglinde presses for more of the story. During one such attack on the “Wolves,” continues Siegmund, he lost his father. Alone, he had to leave the woods and enter the world of people, but there was no happiness for him there. Misfortune trailed him, and he was always at odds with all, no matter how helpful or friendly his intentions. Hunding drily observes that the Norn (Fate) who gave him his destiny did not love him, and no man could enjoy offering him hospitality. Sieglinde gamely asserts that only cowards fear lone, weaponless men, and asks for yet more of the story.

  Siegmund recounts that a girl who was being forced into a loveless marriage called on him for help. He slew her brothers, but this courageous act turned the girl’s anger to sorrow. She lamented their deaths. The kinsmen of the slain men fell upon him, and he defended himself and the girl until his weapons were shattered. He watched her die, and finally escaped. “You can see,” he says to Sieglinde, “why I can’t call myself ‘Peaceful.’” Hunding stands. Those were his kinsmen the stranger fought, but he arrived too late at the battle. Now he returns to find the villain in his own home. He has promised hospitality for the night, and will keep his word, but in the morning they will fight to the death!

  Hunding orders Sieglinde to take his nightly drink into the bedroom and to wait for him there. Sieglinde prepares the drink, silently, urgently trying to draw Siegmund’s attention to something in the tree trunk in the center of the room. Hunding watches them carefully, until he and Sieglinde finally withdraw.

  Comment: It takes an extraordinary tenor and a subtle conductor to keep Siegmund’s long narrative interesting. People who have read Wagner biographies or Cosima’s Diaries will recognize the theme o
f “I don’t know why nobody likes me when I’m really a nice guy” from Wagner’s own life. This narrative is also complicated by another of Wagner’s maddeningly pedantic name games, with “Peaceful” (Friedmund) and “Joyful” (Frohwalt) as well as “Sorrowful” (Wehwalt) and “Wolf-Cub” (Wolfing). Here again (as in Lohengrin and Parsifal) the name is the key to the character, and the game continues right through the end of the act, when Siegmund (“Victor”) is given, and assumes, his rightful name (i.e., true nature). “Wolfe,” obviously, is Wotan, although his “real” name in the human world is “Wälse.” He will tell more about his reasons for wandering the earth and fathering twins on a human wife in his long monologue in Act II.

  There is some mimed business at the end of this scene, as Sieglinde tries to make Siegmund see the hilt of a sword planted in the tree. We hear the still-unexplained sword motif played on a triumphant solo trumpet. We had heard this before in Das Rheingold, when Wotan was “struck by an idea.” The tension at this point is superb, with tympani beating out the rhythmic outline of Hunding’s ominous theme throughout.

  Alone, Siegmund gives vent to his feelings. His father Wälse promised him a sword in time of distress, and here he is, weaponless, waiting for vengeance on his head. He longs for this beautiful woman, but she too is a captive of the enemy. Wälse! Wälse! Where is your sword? A flame from the hearth jumps up, and Siegmund sees a glimmer in the tree trunk. What is it? It reminds him of the woman’s eyes. glowing through the dark, hopeless night. The flame dies down, the room darkens, and Siegmund falls asleep on the ground.

  Comment: This is Siegmund’s spotlight moment, the only real alone-on-stage segment of the opera, and it is awesome. The low-level fear of the preceding introduction explodes into voice, as he cries for his father who abandoned him. The two “Wälse!” exclamations, held for as long as the tenor can hold them, bespeak deep and total panic, while the balance of the narrative is a loving and tender reminiscence of Sieglinde, making demands on the tenor’s expressivity as well as his lungs.

  Sieglinde enters and wakes him up, explaining that she has drugged Hunding’s drink so that Siegmund can save himself. She shows him the sword and tells its story. At her wedding, when she was forced to marry against her will, the guests sat drinking. A stranger came in, an old man whose hat slouched below one eye, but whose single visible eye cowed all with its authority. She alone was filled with a sad longing by this stranger. He flashed a sword, and thrust it into the trunk up to the hilt, declaring it the property of whoever could pull it out. All tried, and all failed. Then she knew the identity of the stranger, and for whom the sword had been planted. It was for a friend who would rescue her! If only that friend were here now! Siegmund declares himself the hero who will win both the sword and woman.

  A sudden gust of wind blows the door of the hut open; frightened, Sieglinde asks who came in or went out. No one left, but spring has burst into the house, explains Siegmund. Spring, in his glory, seeks the house of his sister Love, and Spring and Love are united. You are the spring, she declares joyfully, I longed for through the dead winter. “Let me look at you—where have I seen that noble face before?” She realizes that it is her own, which she has seen reflected in the stream. He answers that she is the image he has hidden within himself. “That voice!” she says. “I know it. I heard it as a child. But more recently too, when my own voice echoed in the forest!” Your eyes, she continues, are those of the stranger who came to my wedding, by which his child recognized him. Tell me, are you really named “Sorrowful?” Siegmund says she must name what she wishes, and he will take his name from her. And was his father really called “Wolfe”? Only to foxlike enemies, he explains, but he was named “Wälse.” If Wälse was your father, then it was for you that he planted the sword, and I will call you by the name I love—Siegmund! Yes, he answers, I am Siegmund, and this sword will be your wedding gift, protecting you as I carry you away from here. He grasps the hilt of the sword, naming it “Notung,” because he finds it in time of distress. Ecstatically, he draws the sword out of the tree, bidding this fairest of women to follow him out into the night. She stops him long enough to tell him that she is Sieglinde, his own sister who has longed for him, and whom he has won along with the sword. Then wife and sister she’ll be to him, and let the blood of the Wälsungs flourish! Together, they flee, entirely consumed by their passion.

  Comment: From the word go, there have been those who cannot handle watching two twins make violent love to each other on stage. Actually, if one wants to get technical about it, it’s really a triple case of incest, since each of the twins is also fondling the memory of their father at the same time. But those who are incapable of metaphor would do better not to attend a performance of the Ring in the first place, and much more is going on here than incest. Siegmund and Sieglinde are in the process of discovering their selves, which is as good as any other definition of love. His face is her reflection, his voice her own echo, to which he responds with the sublime notion that she is the image he has kept hidden within himself.

  This celebrated duet is really not a duet at all, since the two lovers sing separately and never overlap each other. Wagner felt strongly about this as the proper way to depict the discovery of love, although he later modified this view somewhat for Tristan und Isolde. Wagner is at his heights as an opera composer in this scene, painstakingly building each of the details into a sweeping, and utterly believable, climax.

  Siegmund’s unabashedly lyrical Spring Song, for all that has been written about the unique nature of Wagnerian music drama, is a flat-out, bold-faced aria. “Notung,” the name of the sword, is based on the German word Not, which is a handy word signifying “need,” distress,” and even “emergency.”

  Act II

  Setting: A rocky mountain pass.

  After a brief prelude, we see Wotan and his daughter Brünnhilde, the Valkyrie. He tells her that Siegmund and Hunding will fight. She must give her divine support to Siegmund. Hunding’s spirit can go where it wishes after he is slain—he is not needed in Valhalla. Ecstatic, she gives her war cry of “Hojotoho!” She sees Fricka approaching in her chariot drawn by rams, and says she prefers combats of the battlefield to domestic ones. Repeating her war cry, she leaves.

  Comment: The swirling, rushing Prelude tells us we are in the middle of unfolding events. The repeated sword theme reminds us of Siegmund and heroism, we hear the twins running in their passion, and finally there is the charging theme everyone will recognize as “The Ride of the Valkyries.” This is not the complete piece known by that name, which will raise the curtain on Act III, but just enough to introduce us to Brünnhilde. It’s what we would call a tease. Commentators go through great exertions to demonstrate that it is played differently here than in Act III (since Wagner would never repeat himself, etc., etc.), but it’s pretty obvious that Wagner knew a hit tune when he heard one.

  In Act III, the “Hojotohos” are sung by the other eight Valkyries, in many cases by women whose entire careers are based on perfecting the technique. This is the only place where Brünnhilde actually sings them, and a little creative “fudging” is to be expected by the diva, since she has so much else to sing besides. It’s well worth a glance at the printed music to understand why, even if you don’t think you read music. She is expected to traverse over an octave, from G above middle C to high C, in forte voice, ending each phrase in a single upward swoop, and then to hold on to the high Cs at the end. Do not try this at home. Many sopranos turn this into an ascending whoop and hope that it will conclude somewhere in the vicinity of high C. After that, the two measures of trill followed by a high B sustained for a further two measures might be regarded as a bonus prize. One can’t help thinking that a certain amount of wildness on the part of the Brünnhilde was anticipated by Wagner. The point here is to curdle the gastric juices of the audience, not to pass a singing test at a baroque conservatory. However she navigates it, it’s clearly a hell of a way for a soprano to make an entrance—or a livin
g.

  Alone, Wotan mutters that he must face the same conflicts as ever with his wife. Fricka enters, purposeful but still calm. She has sought out her husband in he wilds he loves so as to exact a promise from him. Hunding has called on her as the goddess of marriage. She has heard his prayers and sworn vengeance on the Volsung twins. What wrongs have they committed by falling in love, asks Wotan. If anything is wrong, it’s the bonds that keep people in loveless marriages.

  Fricka slyly says she knows how little Wotan regards vows of marriage, but is he ready to bless the union of a brother and sister? When was that ever done? It is done now, says Wotan, not without a bit of condescension. He advises Fricka to accept the power of love and bless the twins’ union. This angers her. How little he has cared for the gods’ honor lately! And why should she plead the cause of wedlock to him, of all husbands, who has betrayed their marriage so often! He abandoned her while he flew about with the savage Valkyries he fathered, and then he left her for years to live as Wälse with a common mortal, siring those twins who now mock her honor! Wotan is frankly baffled that Fricka can only see an affront to her own honor in his fathering of the Volsungs. She can only understand banal custom and tradition, while his far-sighted goals are beyond her narrow mind. The gods need a hero—one who is independent of the gods and not bound by their restrictions—to do for the gods what they cannot do for themselves. This tack entirely fails to impress the goddess. Independent of the gods? Who breathes life and light into men? Who protects them? What would they aspire to without your prodding? “In your Siegmund, I find only you, for only through you does he stir.” Not so, protests Wotan. Siegmund created himself, and owes nothing to my protection. Then leave him on his own now, she adds hastily. Take back the sword you gave him. He won the sword himself, says Wotan lamely, beginning to sense the flaws in his own case. But who planned for him to need the sword? she presses. Didn’t you plant it in the tree? Didn’t you lead him to find it? Hadn’t you promised it to him? Wotan stands up to answer her, but can say nothing. She continues. Against Wotan himself she would do battle, but under the circumstances Siegmund is nothing but a slave and should be punished as such. Or will a slave make a mockery of the queen of the gods?