Wagner Without Fear

by William Berger

  THE WANDERER (bass or bass-baritone) This is Wotan in Weltschmerz. He has apparently grown weary of Valhalla, and roams the world, seeking and dispensing wisdom. He wears a slouch hat, in the manner of pilgrims, as he did the time Sieglinde saw him at her wedding.

  MIME (tenor) This is not quite the same pathetic victim of his brother Alberich we met in Das Rheingold. Here his envy, or life’s cruelty, have made him an evil, plotting, and sleazy character. He also has a tendency to repeat himself. The role is written for tenor, but not the standard Wagnerian Heldentenor. Mime can be sung by a wide variety of tenors, including the relatively lighter-voiced variety. He must be a good actor, and must have the ability to sing, if not loud, then at least at great length.

  ALBERICH (bass) This onetime master of the Nibelungs has spent the two generations since Das Rheingold in single-minded obsession—he wants the Ring back! Alberich in this opera does not have to make quite as much noise as he did in Das Rheingold, but he still must be a commanding presence. He must portray subtle intelligence and a certain sense of self in his scenes with Wotan and Mime.

  FAFNER (bass) This giant from Das Rheingold transformed himself into a dragon shortly after walking off with the Nibelung’s hoard and the Ring, so we only get to see him as a dragon in this opera.

  ERDA (contralto) Our all-knowing Earth Mother literally pops up again in this opera, and she’s more inscrutable than ever. The age of Earth Wisdom has long passed by the human history moment of Siegfried, and Erda’s words are as murky and mysterious as the distant past. She also has a nickname, the Wala, just to confuse you even more.

  A FOREST BIRD (soprano) This offstage role has some very pretty (and familiar) music to sing, but her singing time is quite brief. The lyric voice required is one of a very few in the Ring, Freia and the Rhinemaidens being the others. It was the great diva Joan Sutherland’s debut role at Covent Garden. Occasionally, the role is assumed by big-name sopranos.

  BRÜNNHILDE (soprano) This is the same ex-Valkyrie whom we left, so poignantly, asleep on the rock surrounded by magic fire.

  THE OPERA

  Prelude and Act I

  Setting: Mine’s cave deep in the forest. Metalsmith works are visible.

  Comment: Whether the curtain is up or down during the Prelude, we have a clear musical picture of Mime alone and brooding silently on servitude, toil, the hoard of gold under Fafner, and the Ring. We can also hear him thinking about the shattered sword Notung, which he knows will be the instrument of Fafner’s death once it is repaired. By this point, the leitmotivs are as familiar as our own relatives, and Wagner can really begin to play with them. It is as easy to follow Mime’s train of thought as if he were singing—perhaps easier. Wagner washes the whole picture in murky tones by relying on the woodwinds in general, and the bassoons in particular, to create an atmosphere of brooding.

  Mime is despairing in his toil. Every sword he crafts is snapped in two by the wild boy Siegfried. There is one sword Siegfried couldn’t shatter. That is Notung, whose fragments Mime has but cannot forge for all his skill. If Mime could ever repair Notung, Siegfried could use it to kill the dragon Fafner, and win the gold and the Ring for Mime! But until then, Mime must continue to make swords just so Siegfried can break them!

  Siegfried enters the cave, hollering and leading a wild bear with which he taunts the terrified Mime. The dwarf begs not to be eaten—he has forged a new sword. Siegfried sends the bear away. The ugly old smith has done his work and gets to live—for now. Why bring a live bear home, asks Mime. I wanted a better companion than you, answers Siegfried. Mime shows him the new sword, which the boy contemptuously breaks, heaping abuse on its maker. Mime whines about ingratitude, and unctuously offers food, which the boy refuses. Mime prattles on about how he raised this little babe and nurtured him, giving him toys and warmth with never a thought for his poor self. Siegfried admits he has learned much from Mime, but has never learned to tolerate him. He loathes the dwarf and only wants to strangle him. That’s why he roams the forest, where the wild creatures are dearer to him than Mime.

  And yet Siegfried always returns to the cave. Why is that so? That’s your heart, explains Mime. All young creatures yearn for their parents. But the young of the forest have two parents, notes Siegfried. Where is Mime’s wife? “I am both father and mother to you,” explains the dwarf, but Siegfried calls him a liar. The young creatures all look like their parents, and he looks no more like Mime than a fish looks like a toad. He says this is the only reason he keeps returning to the cave he hates—to find out who his parents were, and he almost strangles Mime to force the dwarf to tell him.

  Mime explains that he took pity on an ailing woman in the forest, who came back to his cave, delivered a baby, and died. The story emerges laboriously, while Mime interjects his own selfless role in tenderly nurturing the babe—how Sieglinde commanded the babe be named Siegfried, and how his father, whom he never met, was killed in battle. Siegfried demands proof, and Mime shows the splinters of the sword Sieglinde left behind “as cheap payment.” Siegfried orders the sword recast that very day, so he can pursue his adventures and never return to the hated cave. He runs out into the forest, overjoyed to know at last that Mime is not his father. Alone, Mime wonders how he will forge the sword and get Siegfried to kill Fafner.

  Comment: We in the audience must check ourselves to make sure our sympathies don’t get confused in this scene. It’s almost possible to believe Mime at face value. He has, as he claims, nurtured the boy for twenty-odd years, and Siegfried is not a pleasant person. Not until later in the drama is it made very clear that Mime has only done all of this to gain the Ring, after which he will be happy to kill Siegfried. The mawkishness of his little “poor me” song, whose repetitiveness tells us it is used daily to torture the boy, should be sufficient to cast our sympathies with Siegfried. A good modern analogy to this is the Beatles’ song “She’s Leaving Home,” whose chorus of parental self-pity almost succeeds in making us feel for them, but ultimately ends up justifying the daughter’s rejection of them in our eyes. As for Siegfried, we must focus on his horrible loneliness rather than his crassness, or this opera won’t be easy to enjoy.

  Wotan enters the cave, stating in majestic lines that he is called Wanderer by the people of the world. He requests hospitality, offering wise counsel in exchange. Many times has he told people what they needed to know when they asked him. Mime tries to get rid of him, but the Wanderer sits by the fire. He asks Mime to pose any three questions to him, offering his own head if he should fail. Mime accepts, the sooner to be rid of him. He asks who dwells in the depths of the earth. The Nibelungs dwell in Nibelheim, answers the Wanderer. Black-Alberich once ruled them by means of a magic Ring, and he should have won the whole world, but failed. Then who, asks Mime, dwells on the face of the earth? The giants (Riese) dwell in Riesenheim. Fasolt and Fafner ruled them, but they envied the Nibelung’s power and gained the Ring. Fafner slew Fasolt, and now, as a dragon, guards the hoard. Who, asks Mime, lives in the heavens? The gods, answers the Wanderer, live in Valhalla. Wotan, the Alberich of Light, rules them with the Spear cut from the World-Ash Tree, which bears marks of trust and contract (law) carved on its shaft. All obey the Lord of the Spear.

  Mime is satisfied with the answers, and tells the Wanderer he is free to leave, but Wotan stays put. The dwarf should have asked him what he needed to know, rather than try to stump him with abstract questions. Now Mime must stake his head on the three questions posed to him. It is becoming clear to Mime who the Wanderer is, and he braces himself for the questions. What is the race, asks the Wanderer, whom Wotan oppressed though the dearest of all to him? This was the Volsungs, Siegmund and Sieglinde, whom Wälse sired, and from whom sprang Siegfried, the strongest of them all. With what sword, asks Wotan, will Siegfried slay Fafner? Notung is the name of the sword, answers Mime, who tells its story. Wotan flatters his wisdom, and poses the final question. Who will mend Notung’s splinters? Mime’s head spins. How on earth would he know th
at? Then that’s the question you should have asked me, responds Wotan. Now listen well: Only he who does not know fear can remake Notung. By rights, Wotan has won Mime’s head, but he will forfeit it to the one who comes after him—the one who does not know fear. The Wanderer leaves.

  Comment: This scene is rather ridiculous to read about. The first five of the six “questions” are startling in their banality, and give ammunition to those who find the Ring repetitive. Don’t these people have anything else to think about but the same old mistakes of days past?

  The answer is no, they don’t. That’s the point, and in performance this scene is quite powerful. It illustrates how Wotan has become, in a sense, equal to Mime—both are helplessly waiting for Siegfried to take the action they cannot take that will fulfill their destinies. Note how Wotan, in his retelling of the story of the Ring, eliminates his own role in the drama. Instead, the Ring “is lost” by Alberich, and “is gained” by Fafner. He is coming to the point where he understands even his own willful actions as predetermined by an unseen fate.

  The back-and-forth ritualism of this scene is typical of fairy tales and their “three questions,” but is also reminiscent of the Annunciation of Death scene in Die Walküre in its musical feel.

  Alone again, Mime stares out into the sunlit forest, hallucinating that it is a monster waiting to devour him. He collapses in anxiety.

  Siegfried bounds in, abusing Mime for idleness. Mime admits that, despite everything he taught the boy, he forgot to teach him fear. Siegfried asks what fear is, and Mime describes the blood rush that accompanies the sensation of fear in such exquisite detail that the boy wants to experience it for himself. Mime advises him that he’d know fear intimately if he were to see the dragon Fafner. Siegfried insists on going to the dragon’s cave as soon as the sword is finished. He will repair it himself. You were always lazy at your lessons, chides Mime. Now you’ll wish you paid attention. Siegfried pushes him aside, saying there’s nothing he can learn from the one who doesn’t know.

  Mime stands over Siegfried’s shoulder while the boy tosses tools carelessly about the smithy. Siegfried smashes Notung’s splinters even more as he works, saying he must reduce them to mere rubble to build them anew. Mime ponders his dilemma. Siegfried lustily pumps the bellow, while Mime gets the idea to poison him just after he kills Fafner and so win the Ring. He’s not quite as stupid as that Wanderer thought he was! Siegfried pours the molten metal in the trough, and steam hisses. Mime prepares the poisoned soup, but Siegfried’s instincts tell him not to eat any of it. He hammers at the sword, and the dwarf gloats over his future as Master of the Ring. At last, Siegfried triumphantly brandishes the finished sword, bearing it down on the anvil, which breaks in half.

  Comment: Siegfried is all sweaty muscle in this scene, and Mime is revealed as the pure evil he is. His description of fear sounds to most people like a summary of sexual love, and, in a sense, he has spent his life “married” to fear. The juxtaposition of fear and love will be explored beautifully in the opera’s final scene. Siegfried sings long and loud here. While pumping the bellows, his “song” is an elaboration of the same two notes, “NOOOO-tung, NOOOO-tung,” with which his father, Siegmund, had addressed the sword before he pulled it out of the tree in Act I of Die Walküre. Here the same notes also reflect the physical action of the bellows. Siegfried becomes boisterous as he hammers the sword. The hammering must be done onstage by Siegfried. The rhythms are the same as those associated with the Nibelungs in Das Rheingold. It is a test of, if nothing else, the tenor’s percussionary skills.

  Act II

  Setting: The forest.

  A brief prelude introduces dark, quiet, threatening tones—themes associated with brooding, misfortune, and the Curse of the Ring.

  Alberich is keeping watch on the cave called Neidhöhle. Fafner has transformed himself into a dragon, in which guise he sleeps, guarding the hoard of gold. Alberich is convinced he will regain the Ring one day. Is this the day?

  Comment: Alberich’s little monologue here seems dramatically primitive by Wagnerian standards. To have a character, alone on stage, singing “Here I am and this is what I’m doing” belongs to an earlier tradition. Yet the prelude and opening of this long act are appropriately murky and disconcerting. The dark of Mime’s cave has been replaced with the forest, which alternates as a joyous and ominous place. We are at a crossroads here, a breaking point. Alberich, Wotan, Mime, and Fafner are all prisoners in a hell of their own making, obsessed with gaining what they have lost or holding onto what they have. They are slaves to their plans, and Wotan alone sees the futility of the situation. It is time for a change, and only one who has no plan can effect that change.

  Wotan appears as the Wanderer, eliciting a string of abuse from Alberich. The god tells the dwarf to relax—he is only there to see, not to act. Alberich declares he is no longer as gullibly impressed by Wotan’s slickness as he once was, for now he can see the fear that gnaws at the god’s heart. That fear is well founded, for he himself will regain the Ring and topple Valhalla! The god calmly replies that neither of them have any more role to play—events will work themselves out as they must, since it’s up to Siegfried, independently, to succeed or fail. Wotan himself does not even care to affect the outcome.

  Alberich is happy to hear that there’s one less contestant for the Ring! This leaves his brother Mime as the chief rival. Must he fight only Mime? Wotan suggests the question be posed to Fafner himself. Perhaps if Alberich warns the dragon of impending death, he may give up the Ring in exchange for his life. Wotan calls Fafner, who warily asks who wakes him. A friend with advice, says Wotan ironically. A hero is coming to fight you, says Alberich. “I am hungry for him,” is the dragon’s lazy reply. He’s strong, warns Wotan, and Alberich adds that he will prevent the fight if Fafner will give him the Ring. The dragon may safely sleep then with the rest of the gold. Fafner growls that he will keep all he has. “Let me sleep!” The dragon yawns and falls back into oblivion.

  Wotan laughs. “Well, that didn’t work!” He advises Alberich to let things go their appointed way, and to fight only with Mime. He disappears into the forest. Alberich watches him leave, repeating how he hates the gods and will live to see their downfall. He hides behind a rock.

  Comment: People look forward to this scene so they can see what effects the production staff have cooked up for the dragon. Many of the more avant-garde (read: low-budget) productions get mighty impressionistic to avoid putting a papier-mâché dragon on stage. Wagner instructed the bass-singing Fafner to be offstage, preferably under the stage, and to sing through a regular speaking trumpet like those used by carnival barkers. That’s all our modern directors have to read, and they feel licensed to amplify Fafner to the rafters with all their electronic wizardry. It makes Fafner sound like Iggy Pop on a slow night, but we live in an age of overkill.

  As fun as the dragon may be, the most interesting aspect of this scene is the one-on-one confrontation of the two alter egos, Alberich and Wotan. They have paralleled each other’s paths throughout the saga to the point where it now seems logical to refer to them respectively as the Black-Alberich and the Alberich of Light. Both have renounced love for the sake of the Ring—Alberich explicitly in the first scene of Das Rheingold, Wotan more obliquely in his abandonment of Siegmund and Brünnhilde. Both have engendered offspring to win the Ring for them. They have come to understand each other’s psychology and motivation as only adversaries can. The difference is that Wotan has developed, while Alberich, though still a commanding presence, is entirely defined by the same rage. He is a lot like Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost, once magnificent in his evil defiance, now a bit out of step with the times in his repetitive rantings. It is an excellent depiction of what we would call the banality of evil.

  Mime and Siegfried arrive, the dwarf insisting that this is the best place in the world to learn fear. The dragon’s jaws can swallow a man in one gulp, his tail coils around and crushes, even his saliva can burn a man up.
Siegfried asks if the dragon has a heart, and being told that it has, trusts Notung to stab him there. Mime tries to persuade Siegfried to fear the dragon and be wary in battle, and remember how Mime loves him. Siegfried orders him not to love him, and repeats how he loathes the dwarf. Mime says he will withdraw. It is nearly noon, when Fafner likes to slither down to the stream and drink. Siegfried threatens to make the dragon eat Mime, and Mime leaves, hoping that Siegfried and Fafner will kill each other.

  Siegfried stretches out on the ground, still rejoicing that Mime is not his father. But what did his father look like? At least he couldn’t have been ugly, like Mime. He never wants to see that gnome again.

  The leaves of the forest murmur. Siegfried thinks about his mother. What did she look like? He can’t imagine that at all. Perhaps she had eyes like a doe, but lovelier. Why did she die? Do all men’s mothers die of their sons? How sad! If only he could see her!

  A bird hovers over Siegfried, chirping happily. It seems to be trying to tell him something—is it about his mother? The dwarf had told him that birds have a language, if one could understand it. He impulsively cuts a reed. He’ll try to understand the bird’s meaning by imitating its tune. He blows in the reed, but his notes are sour, and his tune does not soar like the bird’s. He admits he’s too stupid to learn from the bird, but he can play a hearty woodland tune on his horn! Siegfried blows his horn, awaking Fafner, who emerges from his cave. This is a pretty playmate, the boy exclaims!