2. Das Rheingold, Scene 4 What are we to make of Erda’s advice to Wotan? She says a dark day is approaching for the gods; Wotan must surrender the Ring! Will giving up the Ring save the gods? Apparently not. Would keeping the Ring hasten their downfall? Probably. Would returning it to the Rhinemaidens have helped? So it is hinted many times subsequently, yet Erda does not address this solution. Granted, she is meant to be mysterious, but she really goes over the edge in that department.
3. Das Rheingold, Scene 4 Does the Ring itself actually have any power whatsoever? Why can’t Wotan, for the brief period when he wears it, compel the giants to submit to his will?
4. Die Walküre, Acts I and II Why do Siegmund and Sieglinde flee? Naturally they want to make love, but Hunding is drugged and manages to sleep through their Act I duet. It’s hard to imagine he’d wake up even for their big “moment of truth.” Siegmund has the sword and intends to fight. He even goes offstage looking for Hunding in the second act. So why did they run away in the first place? Why not have a nice breakfast, let Hunding sleep off his drugs, and then kill each other right there like civilized people? Possible explanation: the people in the land around Hunding’s house are Hunding’s kin, who “protect his honor,” as he says in Act I. Siegmund must get far away to have a one-to-one combat. Likelier explanation: dramatic license. It’s more sensible having the twins show up at the mountain pass in Act II than having Wotan and Fricka argue in Hunding’s living room.
5. Siegfried, Act II Why doesn’t Wotan simply kill Alberich? It wouldn’t be morally right, but he kills Hunding off without a second thought. Dwarfs aren’t immune to murder, as Siegfried demonstrates.
6. Siegfried, Act II Who, exactly, is the Forest Bird in Siegfried? If it’s a voice of primal nature, as the score and all the commentators tell us, or some other manifestation of the “eternal feminine,” why doesn’t it tell Siegfried to return the Ring to the Rhinemaidens? Then everyone can live happily (or miserably) ever after.
7. Götterdämmerung, Act I In Das Rheingold, Fricka was told that a woman who wore the Ring could be assured of her husband’s fidelity, which was apparently the apex of nineteenth-century notions of feminine power. Yet when Brünnhilde is wearing the Ring, a mere spiked cocktail is enough to send her husband reeling off into the arms of, literally, the first woman he sees. Once again, the Ring is not merely fatal, it’s useless as well.
8. Götterdämmerung, Act II Where does Alberich get the gold to buy Hagen’s mother for the night? And what was the going rate for “one-nighters” in those days?
9. Götterdämmerung, Act III Siegfried says the “Nibelungs are his vassals.” Who on earth told him this? Brünnhilde? Why would she even want him to know? Newman suggests this was a holdover from Wagner’s earlier conception of Siegfrieds Tod, which was more akin to the original Nibelungenlied, and that Wagner merely forgot to change it. Imagine staring at a libretto for twenty-eight years and “forgetting” to make a change!
10. Götterdämmerung, Act III Why is Gunther so eager for his brother-in-law’s wedding ring that he dies for it? Did someone tell him that it was the Ring? If so, who? When?
RING TIME LINE
Some people find the durations of the events and the intervals between them to be very confusing, and with good reason. It seems that Wagner left some room for interpretation on this subject. By doing so, he was reflecting the traditions of the classical and medieval epics, which were deliberately vague about time. The events they described did not occur on our plane of reality, chronological or otherwise.
Still, one needs to have some bearings, so the following outline is provided to help give some idea.
Das Rheingold
Scene 1: From the beginnings of time to a point in legendary history.
Scene 2: An unspecified amount of time since the end of the first scene, but not very long afterward.
Scene 3: The same day as Scene 2.
Scene 4: Evening of the same day.
Die Walküre
Act I: One evening, at least one generation past the end of Das Rheingold. Wotan has spent some time worrying in Valhalla, some time roaming the earth, and Siegmund and Sieglinde have grown up since they were born at the time when Wotan was abiding with the mortal woman.
Act II: The following evening.
Act III: The next day into evening.
Siegfried
Act I: One day, after exactly one generation has passed since the end of Die Walküre. We can assume this to be about twenty years.
Act II: That night, into the following day.
Act III: That evening, into the following day.
Götterdämmerung
Prologue: Good question. Siegfried and Brünnhilde may have only spent a single night together, in which case he has certainly learned a lot very quickly, including restlessness.
Act I: This takes however long it took Siegfried to sail up the Rhine. His trip back to the Valkyries’ rock, with Gunther lumbering along, does not seem to have taken more than a few hours. Waltraute says that Wotan “recently” had his Spear shattered, so the time span from the end of Siegfried to the beginning of Götterdämmerung is meant to be understood as brief.
Act II: That night, into the following day.
Act III: That day, into the night.
The time frame of the Ring, then, is very unusual. It covers vast expanses of time, but the actual action occurs in swift moments. In this way, it is very much like the original Nibelungenlied, which focuses the action on busy moments scattered over long historical spans. Basically, once chronological time begins (somewhere in the first scene of Das Rheingold), we get twenty-year stretches of nothing, punctuated three times by extremely eventful single days.
“NONCHARACTERS” IN THE RING
These days, you’re likely to see the gods costumed as astronauts or Hunding’s hut represented as a shopping mall in New Jersey. This is all fun, of course, but the synopses and commentaries still read as if productions were faithful to Wagner’s original specifications. This leads to much confusion, as audiences strive in vain to find the ravens, Grane the horse, or even the rainbow, which they have read about, on the actual stage. In addition, several people and objects are referred to that are important but are never seen. Third, there are objects in the Ring that are practically characters in themselves. This list of “Noncharacters” is provided to help make sense of the story, in spite of any bizarre interpretations you may see onstage.
THE SPEAR This is Wotan’s symbol of authority. He carved it from the World-Ash Tree (in other words, he violated the natural order to impose his system, based on law). He carries it about everywhere until it is smashed by Siegfried.
NOTUNG This is the sword Wotan plants in the tree in Hunding’s house, intending it to be found by Siegmund one day when Siegmund really needs it (hence its name, “Needful”). Notung is shattered by Wotan while Siegmund fights Hunding, but the pieces are picked up by Brünnhilde and given to Sieglinde, who gives them to Mime the dwarf. That’s how Siegfried inherits the pieces of his father’s sword. Once he forges the sword, a feat only he can accomplish, he uses it to shatter Wotan’s Spear. Either this is a form of unconscious vengeance for his father’s death or it tells us that Wotan’s will to self-annihilation has been present in his plans from the start.
THE TARNHELM This is the magic helmet that Mime forges out of the Nibelung gold (not the Rhinegold) on Alberich’s orders in Das Rheingold. It can do a lot of cool things for its owner—let him change shape, become invisible, or wish himself to another location. Nobody, least of all Siegfried, seems to understand or utilize the full power of the Tarnhelm.
THE RING This, of course, is the central prop of the whole affair, although it disappears from the stage from Scene 4 of Rheingold until Act II of Siegfried. Although it’s hard to manifest on stage, we are to imagine the Ring as melting in the final immolation, after which it is tempered by the waters of the Rhine and then taken back down to the river’s depths by the Rhinemaidens.
> THE RHINEGOLD This is the original lump of gold in the Rhine, and then it is the Ring.
THE HOARD OF GOLD This is what the Nibelungs have mined out of the earth as slaves of Alberich. One of the biggest question marks left at the end of the saga concerns this hoard. When we last left it, it was in a cave under two corpses. At the end of the story, no one who knows about it is left alive, with the possible exception of Alberich, who may or may not still be alive. Hmmm …
GRANE Brunnhilde’s flying horse. There is some debate about the sex of the horse. At present, there is an Internet chat group furiously debating the subject. Whatever. Grane loses the ability to fly when Brünnhilde loses her godhead (at the end of Walküre), and apparently falls asleep on the mountaintop when she does. Grane also is awakened by Siegfried’s kiss to Brünnhilde—a detail whose comic potential has never, to my knowledge, been exploited. In theory, Grane burns up with Brünnhilde on Siegfried’s funeral pyre.
THE TWO RAVENS I don’t think you’ll ever actually see two pantomime ravens on stage, but they’re not without some importance. Wotan is, among other things, “Lord of the Ravens,” and these two become his eyes and ears to the world as he sits in Valhalla waiting for das Ende. They make several theoretical appearances in Götterdämmerung, although they also have an important reference, often overlooked, in Siegfried. When Siegfried is looking for the fiery mountaintop, he gets lost, having lost his little bird. He runs into the Wanderer, who explains that the bird fled the presence of his ravens.
GIBICH The founder of the “race” of Gibichungs, apparently brave, strong, and proud in a way his pathetic son Gunther never will be. We know this because Brünnhilde calls Gunther an “unworthy scion of a noble race,” one of several such references to racial deterioration throughout Wagner’s works.
GRIMHILDE The mother of Gunther, Gutrune, and Hagen, and presumably the wife of Gibich. If Gunther lacks his father’s bravery, then surely the shy, retiring Gutrune lacks her mother’s grit. Grimhilde once bit the bullet and slept with a gross Alberich for gold. The story of the Ring does not tell us why she did this, but Grimhilde’s memory is never spoken of shamefully because of this act. Perhaps we are meant to admire her bravery.
THE HEROES OF VALHALLA If you die gloriously in battle, your spirit gets to go to Valhalla. In Wagner’s conception, this is Wotan’s fortress castle, and the heroes are kept on hand to defend the citadel in case of enemy attack. One of Wotan’s concerns about the Ring is that its owner would be able to compel the heroes’ loyalty. According to the stage instructions, we also are supposed to see the heroes burn up in the general conflagration of the finale. Before that, they feast eternally in the Great Hall, with maidens who perform their every wish. Siegmund might be said to alter the course of history by preferring to remain with his sister/wife rather than ascending to macho paradise.
HELLE This is where Siegmund will go if he turns down the Valhalla offer, the underworld kingdom of the dead. Helle is a female deity in Norse and Teutonic mythology.
THE WORLD-ASH TREE This mysterious plant is all over the story. The people of pre-Christian Northern Europe worshipped trees as deities, and remnants of the tree cult are found throughout the medieval epics—and even later. Witness Hans Sachs and his vaguely hallucinogenic elder tree in Meistersinger, to say nothing of the ubiquitous modern Christmas tree. The World-Ash Tree takes on various meanings in the Ring, but basically it is a symbol of the prelegal, Erda-based system that existed before the era of the gods (or, in Robert Graves’s terminology, the matriarchal society before it was supplanted by patriarchy). Wotan cut a branch off the World-Ash Tree to make his famous Spear, causing the tree and its neighboring spring of wisdom to dry up and die. The Norns, as leftovers from the matriarchal times, have never quite been themselves since this violation occurred. This tree comes back in the story of the Ring. Wotan orders his heroes to cut up the dead trunk and pile the logs around Valhalla, which is how everything burns up at the end.
SIEGFRIED’S LIME TREE All right, this may be a very minor detail, but it can cause some unnecessary confusion. The tree that Siegfried sits under in Act II of the opera bearing his name is indeed a lime tree, but there are no little green citrus fruits growing on it. The English language uses the same name for the fruit tree and the tree Germans call the Linden. Germans simply adore Linden trees, as seen in the name of the showplace avenue of Berlin, Unter den Linden. Hitler, in a very un-Germanic moment, chopped down all the trees along that street for better military parades. The Linden trees are presently being replanted, and, no, they will not have limes hanging from them.
THE TREE IN HUNDING’S HOUSE This, too, is an ash tree, but if there’s any significance in that fact, it is very arcane.
THE VOLSUNGS’ MOTHER This poor creature never even warrants a name. She was merely used by Wotan as a twin factory for his plan to have offspring recapture the Ring. She was killed in the attack on her house when Sieglinde was abducted.
WOTAN’S MISSING EYE This disembodied organ pops up all over the place. Wotan paid for his drink at the Norns’ spring with it, and also pays to marry Fricka with it. (Shaw and others see much significance in the second of these payments.) When Siegfried asks the Wanderer what happened to his missing eye, Wotan replies with what must be the single creepiest line in all opera: “It is now [in you] looking back at me.” Wes Craven could hardly improve on that one.
PARSIFAL
PREMIERE: BAYREUTH, 1882.
THE NAME AND HOW TO PRONOUNCE IT
Parsifal is named for its lead character, and it’s pretty much pronounced as it’s written. If you want to show off your German, hit the r with a slight glottal fricative. British people, perhaps to emphasize their distinctness from Continentals, tend to mispronounce it “Parsifull.”
WHAT IS PARSIFAL?
Parsifal is Wagner’s final masterpiece, a depiction of a corrupted society renewed by an innocent young man who becomes wise through compassion. The story of the individual, that is, the “coming of age” of the hero, is as old as storytelling itself. The interesting thing about this example of the genre is the community where the hero becomes himself, for Parsifal stumbles (literally) upon the knights of the Holy Grail. These worthy men live in a castle in northern Spain, sustained by and devoted to the Grail itself.
The legends of the Holy Grail are complicated, numerous, and extremely far-reaching, embedded in the Euro-American consciousness by such diverse sources as the troubadours, Sir Walter Scott, and even Monty Python and Indiana Jones. The definition of the Grail changes in each of these manifestations. For the purposes of Parsifal, the Grail is the cup that Jesus used at the Last Supper, and that was used to catch his blood when he was pierced on the cross by the Spear. The Grail and the Spear were both transferred by angels to Monsalvat in northern Spain where, in the Middle Ages, the Christian and Muslim worlds were slugging it out for the domination of Europe. A king, named Titurel, was chosen by God to head a brotherhood of knights, and a castle was built that none can find but those called by the Grail. At the castle, the knights are sustained spiritually and physically by the Grail, which is uncovered by the king in a ritual very closely resembling Holy Communion. Thus renewed, the knights embark on adventures for the greater glory of their faith, carrying the Holy Spear with them to battle the heathen and other enemies.
If all this strikes you as a bit much for the opera house, you are not alone. Many people object to the Christian particularism of the work (Nietzsche, for one, threw a world-class fit), while others find the liturgical language and enactments truly blasphemous. Wagner himself could not bear to call it a music drama, much less an opera, and called it, instead, a Bühnenweihfestspiel, or “stage-consecrating festival play.” From the start, it was intended to be performed only at Bayreuth. Parsifal has always had a certain aura surrounding it, a sort of uniqueness perpetuated by fans and detractors alike.
Yet for all its rituals and otherworldliness, Parsifal has a powerful story to tell. All is not well in the
kingdom of the Grail. The Holy Spear has been lost to an evil magician, the king lies incapacitated with a wound that won’t heal, and the land itself is enveloped in gloom. Wagner used a dark palette in his scoring to depict this, which is part of the reason many people find this work heavy and dull.
Such people are not merely being obtuse. In a word, Parsifal is slow. There is very little external action. The score even includes directions for periods of complete silence. Parsifal is not for the impatient, nor for those who need to be hit over the head with loud sound bites every few minutes to stay awake. In a way, the experience of Parsifal is akin to that of a no-hitter in baseball. It is the very pinnacle for the devoted fan, who writhes in ecstasies of tension and delayed gratification, while the casual spectator languishes in boredom waiting in vain for “action” (hit tunes or home runs).
For all its static nature and its otherworldliness, there is little that is obscure in the score, and it can be appreciated by any open-minded operagoer with the ability to sit still for a few hours. There is no need to sweat out details of the score beforehand. As Cosima put it well in her Diaries, “It is all so direct!”
CAST OF CHARACTERS
PARSIFAL (tenor) A “guileless fool,” which is the literary way to say a young man who has done nothing and knows less. Parsifal has lived on his own since running away from home as a young child. He does not even know his own name. In many ways, he is similar to the all-free and unsocialized Siegfried, although, being somewhat more surreal and somehow less human, he is considerably less obnoxious. Parsifal actually does very little throughout this work in the usual sense of heroic action, beyond the admittedly impressive feat of catching a spear in midair. His growth is largely internal.
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