Title Page Everything That Is, Ends: Apocalypticism in Wagner’s Ring by Woodrow Steinken BA, New York University, 2015 MA, University of Pittsburgh, 2018 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2021 Committee Page UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Woodrow Steinken It was defended on March 23, 2021 and approved by James Cassaro, Professor, Music Adriana Helbig, Associate Professor, Music David Levin, Professor, Germanic Studies Dan Wang, Assistant Professor, Music Dissertation Director: Olivia Bloechl Professor, Music ii Copyright © by Woodrow Steinken 2021 iii Abstract Everything That Is, Ends: Apocalypticism in Wagner’s Ring Woodrow Steinken, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2021 This dissertation traces the history of apocalypticism, broadly conceived, and its realization on the operatic stage by Richard Wagner and those who have adapted his works since the late nineteenth century. I argue that Wagner’s cycle of four operas, Der Ring des Nibelungen (1876), presents colloquial conceptions of time, space, and nature via supernatural, divine characters who often frame the world in terms of non-rational metaphysics. Primary among these minor roles is Erda, the personification of the primordial earth. Erda’s character prophesies the end of the world in Das Rheingold, a prophecy undone later in Siegfried by Erda’s primary interlocutor and chief of the gods, Wotan. I argue that Erda’s role changes in various stage productions of the Ring, and these changes bespeak a shifting attachment between humanity, the earth, and its imagined apocalyptic demise. As a given production asks new apocalyptic questions, we receive new fictive stage worlds with different limits, endings, and prophetic figures, often through different staging practices and forms of technological mediation. Apocalypticism takes many forms here, as the ends to many different kinds of worlds and epochs. The first chapter introduces what I am calling Wagner’s “voices from elsewhere,” magical or prophetic characters across his music dramas that sing prophecies from beyond the limits of the stage. Chapter 2 applies this framework to one of these “voices,” Erda, and analyzes her two scenes in the Ring (Das Rheingold scene 4 and Siegfried Act III, scene 1). Chapter 3 turns to Erda’s role as staged, where I argue we find many different “Erdas” among the history of staged Ring productions, where her message and the meaning of apocalypse in Wagner’s fictive world changes. iv Chapter 4 explores the Ring’s central themes of apocalypse and utopia; I aim to show here that contemporary stagings of the Ring display an ability for the work to dramatize new apocalypses and utopias. In chapter 5, I read Erda’s message particularly in terms of the lesson it prescribes— "learning to die”—and I focus on stagings that foreground the Ring’s paradoxical senses of time. v Table of Contents 1.0 Introduction: Voices from Elsewhere in Richard Wagner’s Music Dramas .................... 1 2.0 Erda’s Two Scenes: Apocalypse, Prophecy, and Peripeteia ............................................. 19 2.1 Das Rheingold, Scene 4: Apocalypse Prophesied ...................................................... 30 2.2 Siegfried Act III, Scene 1: Apocalypse Reversed ....................................................... 46 3.0 Erda in Three Dimensions: Historical, Remediated, and Live ......................................... 58 3.1 The Stakes of Staging Wagner’s Ring and the Ethos of Space at Bayreuth ........... 63 3.2 Mid-Century Ring Cycles ............................................................................................ 79 3.3 Opera in Place ............................................................................................................... 95 3.4 When I Saw the World End ....................................................................................... 102 4.0 Apocalypse Staged .............................................................................................................. 110 4.1 Anthropocene Endings ............................................................................................... 121 5.0 Learning to Die .................................................................................................................... 134 5.1 Starting Over Again ................................................................................................... 149 6.0 Conclusion: Opera and/as Metaphysics ............................................................................ 158 6.1 Learning to Dream in the Elsewhere ........................................................................ 161 6.2 Operatic Meaning, Truth, and Their Limits ............................................................ 171 Bibliography .............................................................................................................................. 179 vi List of Figures Figure 1-1 The "voice from above" sings Parsifal's prophecy ................................................. 6 Figure 1-2 The Woodbird's music ............................................................................................. 11 Figure 2-1 Erda's ascension music, mm. 3458-9 ...................................................................... 32 Figure 2-2 The music of the Rhine ............................................................................................ 32 Figure 2-3 Erda's monologue with Leitmotifs in brackets, mm. 3471-3508 .......................... 33 Figure 2-4 Erda's plea ("höre!"), mm. 3495-7 ......................................................................... 35 Figure 2-5 The Weltuntergang Prophecy, mm. 3499-3508 ..................................................... 37 Figure 2-6 The Götterdämmerung Leitmotif, mm. 3502-3 ..................................................... 38 Figure 2-7 The Erda and Götterdämmerung motifs ............................................................... 38 Figure 2-8 The Wanderer wakens Erda to the "love" motive, mm. 76-7 .............................. 50 Figure 2-9 Erda wakes up to "magic sleep" music, mm. 124-131 .......................................... 51 Figure 2-10 Erda explains her dream-knowledge, mm. 190-199 ............................................ 52 Figure 2-11 Erda accuses Wotan of "Meindei" [perjury], mm. 305-6 .................................. 53 Figure 2-12 Erda and Wotan exchange accusations, mm. 334-351 ........................................ 54 Figure 2-13 The World Inheritance Leitmotif, mm. 408-410 ................................................. 55 vii 1.0 Introduction: Voices from Elsewhere in Richard Wagner’s Music Dramas Voices and bodies often exist at the limits of hearing and at the limits of the stage in Richard Wagner’s music dramas, especially in his later works. Such is the case with many of the composer’s minor dramatis personae: the young sailor at the very start of Tristan und Isolde (1865), the mysterious “voice from above” and Titurel (the voice from the tomb) in Parsifal (1882), and numerous characters throughout the Ring cycle (1876), such as the Woodbird, Fafner, and—the subject of this study—Erda, the avatar of the primordial earth who dwells in its deepest reaches. However, I argue that Erda functions quite differently from other voices from elsewhere, yet still retains many of their magical and authoritative qualities. My analysis in this dissertation focuses on Erda’s role, further, because of its closeness with one of the Ring cycle’s most central and enduring themes: the end of the world, its Götterdämmerung or “twilight of the gods.” Erda is a character of ancestral, chthonic origins who, towards the end of the Ring’s first opera Das Rheingold (scene 4), emerges from under the stage and delivers a doomsday prophecy to Wotan, chief of the gods. She tells Wotan that “alles was ist, endet” [everything that is, ends], that he and the other gods are doomed to fade unless he shuns the all-powerful ring. Erda’s appearance, however, is a strange one. The contralto singing Erda, according to Wagner’s stage instructions, emerges to only half her height—she remains partly visible, half occupying the stage and half residing elsewhere. This is a small moment in Wagner’s large work of four music dramas and yet, it raises questions for those who witness and hear it: what is the relationship between this strange character, the apocalypse she prophesies, and the spectacle of her uncanny appearance? While these are tough questions to blithely answer, I argue in this dissertation that her role has provided productions of the Ring since Wagner’s own with a 1 vernacular mouthpiece for voicing and staging contemporary concerns about the end of the world, specific to the time and place of each reiteration of Erda’s appearance and the warning she sings. Later in the Ring, during the third drama (Siegfried Act III, scene 1), Erda appears again, in an episode where she and Wotan seem to flip their respective roles from their first encounter. Here, Erda appears entirely on the stage because Wotan, and us audience members, have ostensibly traveled to Erda’s dwelling place: that mysterious elsewhere. In this scene Wotan supplies the prophecy—not of apocalypse, but of a potential utopia guided by the redemption of the hero Siegfried by the sacrifice of Wotan’s Valkyrie daughter Brünnhilde. Yet,