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'Alles, Was Ist, Endet:' on Dramatic Text, Absolute Music, Adorno, and Wagner's Ring

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'Alles, Was Ist, Endet:' on Dramatic Text, Absolute Music, Adorno, and Wagner's Ring SHERRY D. LEE ‘Alles, was ist, endet:’ On Dramatic Text, Absolute Music, Adorno, and Wagner’s Ring ABSTRACT The crux of the operatic genre has always been the perennially problematic relationship between text and music. Richard Wagner attempted to solve this con- undrum in his new art form of music drama – first embodied in his monumental Ring cycle – which he theorized in gendered terms as a union of poetry (male) and music (female), an imagined marriage between the qualities of Shakespearean drama and Beethovenian symphony. But according to Theodor Adorno, the very notion of symphonic music, which follows its own musical logic, is antitheti- cal to the genre of opera, which demands that music construct itself according to its relationship to language. From the impasse between the demands of the opera- tic art form and the increasingly autonomous music of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, he theorized the end of opera itself in the age of mod- ernism. This article entwines Wagner’s concept of music drama, the musico- dramatic character of Erda who prophesies the end of the world in the Ring, and Adorno’s diagnosis of opera’s fatal condition in the decades following Wagner, to examine the principle of ending in opera, and of opera, and how the former can be read as a prefiguration of the latter. ‘All that is, ends.’ This terse announcement is made by the goddess Erda in act 4 of Das Rheingold, the opening opera in Richard Wagner’s monumental Ring cycle. The prophecy of an inevitable end, which hangs over the entire remainder of this fifteen-plus-hour opus, arrives near the end of the begin- ning of the Ring and dramatically signals the beginning of the end. ‘Neither from the musical nor from the aesthetic point of view can we avoid the impression that the operatic form is obsolete’ (Adorno, ‘Opera’ 71). In 1959, Theodor W. Adorno made this pithy pronouncement in the chapter of his Introduction to the Sociology of Music devoted to the genre of opera, which he characterized as ‘a species of art that is outliving itself and will hardly survive the next blow,’ whose ‘condition is unalter- able’ (83). What follows here is an examination of ending, in opera, and of opera, and of how the former can be read as a kind of prefiguration of the latter. university of toronto quarterly, volume 79, number 3, summer 2010 doi: 10.3138/utq.79.3.922 dramatic text, absolute music, adorno, and wagner’s ring 923 My investigation draws upon an approach in Wagner criticism that treats his music dramas and his theoretical writings as, in Jean-Jacques Nattiez’s term, ‘interlocking texts’ (8). I adopt a similar approach – perhaps some- what like the temporal threads in the rope of history spun by the Norns in Go¨tterda¨mmerung – of intertwining elements of Wagner’s theory of music drama with features of his Ring cycle. Significant implications arise from reading the character of Erda, whose knowledge and musical identity encompass the origins of the world of the Ring and the end she foretells, in light of Wagner’s theories of the relationship between word and music in the origins of the music drama. However, I also bring a third element into this constellation (there are, after all, three Norns): that of Adorno’s critiques of Wagner’s oeuvre and of the fate of the operatic genre. The word–music relationship Wagner posited as the beginning of the music drama is also at the centre of Adorno’s theory of opera, in which their association becomes irreversibly adversarial. When Wagner’s theories, his music in the Ring, and Adorno’s critique intertwine, the end prophe- sied by Erda resonates with the end Adorno predicted for opera itself. Perhaps appropriate to my interest in the idea of ending, I prefer to embark on a discussion that is terminable, that does not threaten the sense of potential endlessness that may occasionally seize hapless audi- ence members who find themselves in the midst of any one Wagner opera, let alone a cycle of four of them; and for that reason I am choosing, on the advice of Linda and Michael Hutcheon, to circumscribe my focus. Given the ‘sheer length’ of the Ring, not to mention the very real possi- bility that ‘the Ring is about everything,’ the decision to focus on a single theme or character may or may not be ‘inevitable,’ but at the very least it is practical (73). The Hutcheons choose for their part to focus on the figure of Wotan, arguing that, although Wagner initially con- ceived his work as the story of Siegfrieds Tod, ‘it soon became the story less of Siegfried’s death than of Wotan’s dying’ (74). The cycle can thus be read as ‘a moving narrative about Wotan’s process of adaptation to the con- crete understanding of his imminent end’ (75). Although my preoccupa- tion is similarly with ending, my focus is instead on the very different character of Erda. In all the vast literature on the Ring Cycle – archival, analytical, descrip- tive, hermeneutic – certain of Wagner’s characters have been investigated quite thoroughly, while relatively little attention has been given to others. The figure of Erda is a case in point. She is rarely discussed at length, but the relative neglect of her character is undeserved, for her role is crucial in the cycle as a whole. Erda is something of an enigma.1 Both her 1 Studies of mythic models for the Ring point out that she does not appear in the poetic and prose Eddas, or in any of the other Teutonic sagas. She appears to be Wagner’s com- bination of the Norse concepts of Earth-Mother goddess and the volva, or prophetic wise- university of toronto quarterly, volume 79, number 3, summer 2010 924 sherry d. lee origins and her personality are mysterious. In her two appearances during the cycle, her speech is cryptic, delivering nebulous warnings of unspecified future disasters, and failing to provide clear answers to ques- tions asked of her. Perhaps because of her mysterious nature, she is con- sidered unknowable, yet the very enigma of Erda does tend to spark curiosity. It has prompted me to examine her dramatic and musical per- sonas and relationships to other characters in an attempt to achieve a clearer view of the significance of her role in the Ring. This examination leads to considerations of temporality and transformation, the entangle- ment of word, music, and gender, and the state of sleep. And it leads me to suggest that the figure of Erda not only dramatically and musically encompasses the principle of ending that governs the Ring from the very beginning, but that it also embodies quintessential features of Wagnerian music drama that, according to Adorno, pointed toward the impending end of opera itself. DAS ENDE DER OPER For Adorno, writing on opera in the 1950s, the notion that the operatic genre had entered a state of crisis was in some respects old news, having surfaced previously during the Weimar Republic, hardly more than three decades after the death of Wagner. The question of an Opernkrise was hotly debated in German journals and newspapers and tended to revolve around two issues. One was the new trend of compos- ing operas on contemporary themes in contemporary settings, with realist characters and plots, and at times incorporating contemporary musical influences (particularly jazz from America). A second issue was the then-new and controversial practice of restaging classic works in contem- porary, updated, or avant-garde settings. The rise of Regieoper was a phenomenon especially associated with the Kroll Opera House in Berlin, and the ‘Kroll Experiment’ of radical reinterpretation of the operatic canon was central to debates about opera’s form and function, on which many intellectuals and composers, including Schoenberg, Hindemith, Stravinsky, Schreker, Weill and others, weighed in.2 Adorno’s doubts about the effectiveness of Regieoper’s attempts to reinvent the genre are evident in his 1955 article entitled ‘Bourgeois Opera,’ which begins, To focus our thoughts about contemporary theatre on opera is certainly not justifiable in terms of opera’s immediate relevance. Not only has the crisis of woman, with some inspiration thrown in from Jakob Grimm’s Deutsche Mythologie. See Cooke (226–28); also on the possible mythic origins of Erda, see Cord (110–16). 2 For more on the increasing importance of the role of the director in opera performance, see Savage (350–420). university of toronto quarterly, volume 79, number 3, summer 2010 dramatic text, absolute music, adorno, and wagner’s ring 925 opera been well known and persistent in Germany for thirty years, not only have opera’s place and function become questionable in today’s society, but, beyond this, opera in and of itself has ... come to seem peripheral and indifferent, an impression which is forcefully combated to a limited extent by attempts at innovation. Indeed, it is hardly a coincidence that these attempts at innovation usually get stuck halfway ...’(15) Adorno took the questions concerning opera’s continuing relevance as indicating a larger trend in the life of the genre, but one that was less a sign of a changing genre than of a moribund one. His perspective on the issue is incisive and broad-ranging; his dialectical view of the so-called crisis is evident in the ‘Opera’ chapter from the 1959 Introduction to the Sociology of Music, wherein he offers the following: What thirty years ago induced the judgment that opera was passe´ was not mere surfeit with the world of its forms ...The dawning insight, rather, was that in style, in substance, and in attitude the opera had nothing to do any more with the people it had to appeal to if its outwardly pretentious form was to justify the prodigal extravagance required.
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