Inside the Ring: Essays on Wagner's Opera Cycle

Inside the Ring: Essays on Wagner’s Opera Cycle John Louis DiGaetani Professor Department of English and Freshman Composition James Morris as Wotan in Wagner’s Die Walküre. Photo: Jennifer Carle/The Metropolitan Opera hirty years ago I edited a book in the 1970s, the problem was finding a admirer of Hitler and she turned the titled Penetrating Wagner’s Ring: performance of the Ring, but now the summer festival into a Nazi showplace An Anthology. Today, I find problem is finding a ticket. Often these in the 1930s and until 1944 when the myself editing a book titled Ring cycles — the four operas done festival was closed. But her sons, Inside the Ring: Essays on within a week, as Wagner wanted — are Wieland and Wolfgang, managed to T Wagner’s Opera Cycle — to be sold out a year in advance of the begin- reopen the festival in 1951; there, published by McFarland Press in spring ning of the performances, so there is Wieland and Wolfgang’s revolutionary 2006. Is the Ring still an appropriate clearly an increasing demand for tickets new approaches to staging the Ring and subject for today’s audiences? Absolutely. as more and more people become fasci- the other Wagner operas helped to In fact, more than ever. The four operas nated by the Ring cycle. revive audience interest and see that comprise the Ring cycle — Das Wagnerian opera in a new visual style Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Political Complications and without its previous political associ- Götterdämmerung — have become more ations. Wieland and Wolfgang Wagner and more popular since the 1970s. Although Wagner died in 1883, 50 — the composer’s grandsons — empha- Back then there were only two years prior to Hitler’s regime, the Nazis sized the Ring’s connections with Greek opera companies in the United States clearly wanted to give their criminal tragedy and staged abstract productions that ever staged the Ring — The movement some intellectual clout so that emphasized the Ring’s complex Metropolitan Opera in New York and they quoted the world-famous opera characterizations and mythic dimen- the San Francisco Opera — and not composer. As a result, Richard Wagner sions. These new productions reflected very frequently at that. How the situa- had a very tainted name after World the extensive lighting effects in the Ring tion has changed since then. Now every War II, especially in America. While the cycle and focused on its symbolism. opera company in the world wants to composer’s anti-Semitic prejudices did stage the Ring cycle. In the United not appear in his operas, his reputation New Visual Styles for the Ring States, Ring cycles have appeared in had been harmed. Rudolf Bing (a former many other places, including Seattle, manager of The Metropolitan Opera) in Many people, especially the young, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Los his memoirs reported that even in a city have been drawn to Wagner by these Angeles, and Dallas — and around the as operatically sophisticated as New new approaches — not to mention the world in cities like Toronto, Tokyo, York, people simply did not want to very quality of his wonderful operas. Shanghai, Beijing, Adelaide, and hear Wagnerian opera as long as 10 Many of them are too young to have the London, in addition to most of the years after the war. What caused such a old World War II associations, and thus other European opera capitals. We are major change in attitude toward can see and hear the operas with minds clearly living during a Wagner renais- Wagnerian opera since then? unburdened by these ugly memories. In sance when the Ring is being staged Beyond the simple passage of time addition, the symphonic quality of around the world — and some wealthy and the magical quality of this compos- Wagner’s music, coupled with its dra- fans (often called Ring-heads) will go er’s operas, one of the major factors was matic and visual powers, has attracted anywhere in the world to see a new pro- the Wagner Festival (where the Ring new audiences through recordings and duction of this tetralogy of operas. All had its premiere) in Bayreuth, Germany. videotapes. Now that virtually every this represents a revolutionary change in Winifred Wagner, the widow of the opera house in the world has some sys- attitude, and all within 30 years. Back composer’s son, Siegfried, was a great tem of surtitles, it has also helped 24 HOFSTRAHORIZONS Wagnerian opera since when audiences Wagnerite, and even a casual under- stage designers and inspire them to pro- can understand what is being sung on standing of the Ring forces one to pon- duce fascinating new Ring productions. stage, they become more engaged in der what happens to the gold after it is So many of the visual effects Wagner opera. The age of compact discs, video- stolen from the river and transformed wanted seem cinematic because of the cassettes, CDs, and DVDs has brought into the ring, with its immense wealth composer’s impossible demands. The new audiences to Wagnerian opera — and power. In many ways the Ring is a ending of Götterdämmerung, with the first in Europe and now around the study in greed and the corruption that hall of the Gibichungs afire, Valhalla in world. Wagner can make music that results when even noble characters like flames, and the Rhine overflowing, sounds hot (the fire music of the Ring), the god Wotan renounce love and seems still impossible to achieve sexy (the first act of Die Walküre and the become murderously ruthless in their onstage. Some great filmmaker, though, last scene of Siegfried), tragic (the open- determination to possess the mighty ring. The power of money and what it could create wonderful images with does to people remain the obvious inter- these Wagnerian demands, assuming of pretations, as well as how our ability to course that realism is worth achieving. love can be incapacitated by our desire If Wagner were alive today, he would for money. In many ways the Ring is a probably be turning his operas into family tragedy that shows how money films, given the impossible imagistic and power can destroy a family and pit demands he makes of the operatic stage. one member against another. The dramatic and mythic qualities The Ring’s Characters of the Ring have also attracted many new fans to its power. At a time when Besides fantastic visual effects, char- J.R.R. Tolkien’s own Ring — both in its acterization remains another of Wagner’s original form as novels and its newer appeals. His correspondence is filled film versions — has become very popu- with reference to people as either loving lar, it is not surprising that Wagner’s friends or dangerous enemies. In his Ring (certainly the source of the Tolkien work) becomes more and more enticing. Both artists were interested in mythic Jon Fredric West as Siegfried and Jane Eaglen as Brünnhilde patterns such as love and hate, evil and in Wagner’s Götterdämmerung. revenge, water and air, earth and fire, life and death, tragedy and comedy, and ing of Götterdämmerung and Siegfried’s death and transfiguration. It is no coin- funeral music), and silly (the flute play- cidence that the Ring ends where it ing of Siegfried in the second act of begins, in the depths of the Rhine. Siegfried). All these varied musical Recurrent cycles remain what the Ring is effects become cleverly woven into the essentially about, and our lives are gov- drama and create symphonic sounds erned by them. A man dies of cancer, that accentuate theatrical developments. his grandson is born a month later; A scene from Wagner’s Das Rheingold. Photo: Ken Howard/The Metropolitan Opera lovers fight and make up; water evapo- The Ring’s Revolutionary Ideas rates and clouds are formed; matter is personal life he tended to look upon other people in extremes, as heroes or The young have also been attracted destroyed, but energy is created. The villains — and indeed there is a bipolar to Wagner as a social revolutionary. The forces of nature occur all around us and quality to his life in general, a life lived spring of 1849 found Wagner at the bar- control our lives, and they come in ricades in Dresden, fighting the aristo- cycles — like Wagner’s Ring — and in extremes of often suicidal depressions cratic establishment and defending the these cycles both create lives and and paranoid manias. But one of the rights of the poor and the disenfran- destroy them. most wonderful and amazing things chised. The year 1848, during which he about the Ring is its lack of melodramat- started work on the Ring, was also the The Ring’s Scenic Demands ic characterization. The Ring’s characters year that Karl Marx wrote The remain as inexhaustible as real people Communist Manifesto. The Ring’s own The scenic effects that Wagner because they refuse to be neatly catego- anti-materialism and anti-capitalism are demands, utterly impossible at the time rized and dismissed. Who is the real emphasized by several critics, starting the operas were written in the l9th cen- villain in the Ring? The god Wotan with George Bernard Shaw’s The Perfect tury, provide fresh challenges to modern does much more evil than the dwarf HOFSTRAHORIZONS 25 Alberich ever dreams of — and often be enjoyed. The new book will provide Alberich’s many personal rejections and more information about this work for his very isolation make him a very sym- Ring fans, and with more knowledge of pathetic character. In Das Rheingold this vast work comes more enjoyment.

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