CHAN 3045 bookcover.qxd 9/7/07 1:21 pm Page 1 CHANDOS O PERA IN ENGLISH CHAN 3045(4) PETE MOO ES FOUNDATION CHAN 3045 BOOK.qxd 13/7/07 3:15 pm Page 2 Richard Wagner (1813–1883) AKG Siegfried Second Day of the Festival Play The Ring of the Nibelung Music drama in three acts Poem by Richard Wagner English translation by Andrew Porter Siegfried ......................................................................................................................Alberto Remedios tenor Mime ..........................................................................................................................Gregory Dempsey tenor Wanderer..............................................................................................................Norman Bailey bass-baritone Alberich ......................................................................................................Derek Hammond-Stroud baritone Fafner ................................................................................................................................Clifford Grant bass Erda ..............................................................................................................................Anne Collins contralto Brünnhilde........................................................................................................................Rita Hunter soprano Voice of the Woodbird ..............................................................................................Maurine London soprano Sadler’s Wells Opera Orchestra Barry Tuckwell solo horn Reginald Goodall Richard Wagner 3 CHAN 3045 BOOK.qxd 13/7/07 3:15 pm Page 4 COMPACT DISC ONE Time Page Time Page 12 ‘What you needed to know’ 8:32 [p. 130] Act I Wanderer, Mime 1 Prelude 5:28 [p. 118] 13 ‘The fragments! The sword!’ 3:11 [p. 131] Mime, Wanderer Scene 1 TT 63:40 [p. 00] 2 ‘Wearisome labour!’ 4:05 [p. 118] Mime COMPACT DISC TWO 3 ‘Hoiho! Hoiho!’ 2:08 [p. 119] Scene 3 Siegfried, Mime 1 ‘Accursed light!’ 1:15 [p. 132] 4 ‘Well, there are the pieces’ 2:42 [p. 120] Mime Siegfried, Mime 2 ‘Hey there! You idler!’ 4:14 [p. 133] 5 ‘A whimpering babe’ 1:35 [p. 121] Siegfried, Mime Mime 3 ‘Have you not felt within the woods’ 5:46 [p. 134] 6 ‘Much you’ve taught to me, Mime’ 9:54 [p. 121] Mime, Siegfried Siegfried, Mime 4 ‘Give me these pieces’ 4:04 [p. 135] 7 ‘I found once in the wood’ 5:58 [p. 124] Siegfried, Mime Mime, Siegfried 5 ‘Notung! Notung! Sword of my need!’ 9:29 [p. 137] 8 ‘And now these fragments’ 2:00 [p. 126] Siegfried, Mime Siegfried, Mime 6 ‘Hoho! Hoho! Hohi!’ (Forging Song) 7:05 [p. 139] 9 ‘He storms away!’ 1:53 [p. 126] Siegfried, Mime Mime Act II Scene 2 7 Prelude 6:07 [p. 141] 10 ‘Hail there, worthy smith!’ 4:04 [p. 127] Wanderer, Mime Scene 1 11 ‘I sit by your hearth’ 12:07 [p. 128] 8 ‘In gloomy night by Fafner’s cave I wait’ 2:46 [p. 141] Wanderer, Mime Alberich 4 5 CHAN 3045 BOOK.qxd 13/7/07 3:15 pm Page 6 Time Page Time Page 9 ‘To Neidhöhl by night I have come’ 7:21 [p. 142] Scene 3 Wanderer, Alberich 6 ‘Hehe! Sly and slippery knave’ 3:12 [p. 152] 10 ‘Not my plan!’ 3:00 [p. 143] Alberich, Mime Wanderer, Alberich 7 ‘Tarnhelm and ring, here they are’ 3:13 [p. 155] 11 ‘Fafner! Fafner! You dragon, wake!’ 3:05 [p. 144] Siegfried, Woodbird, Mime Wanderer, Alberich, Fafner 8 ‘Be welcome, Siegfried!’ 10:11 [p. 155] 12 ‘Now, Alberich! That plan failed!’ 4:38 [p. 145] Mime, Siegfried, Alberich Wanderer, Alberich 9 ‘You lie there too, mighty dragon’ 10:43 [p. 158] Siegfried, Woodbird Scene 2 13 ‘We go no further!’ 6:32 [p. 145] Mime, Siegfried Act III 10 14 ‘So he’s no father of mine’ 1:55 [p. 148] Prelude 3:00 [p. 160] Siegfried TT 67:34 [p. 00] Scene 1 11 COMPACT DISC THREE ‘Waken, Wala! Wala! Awake!’ 2:20 [p. 160] Wanderer 1 ‘Could I but know’ 2:45 [p. 148] 12 ‘Strong is your call’ 12:16 [p. 161] Siegfried (Forest Murmurs) Erda, Wanderer 2 ‘See my mother –’ 10:05 [p. 148] 13 ‘You unwise one, learn what I will’ 4:31 [p. 163] Siegfried } Wanderer 3 ‘Ha ha! At last with my call’ 3:33 [p. 150] Siegfried, Fafner Scene 2 4 ‘Who are you, youthful hero’ 4:52 [p. 151] 14 ‘I see that Siegfried’s near’ 1:08 [p. 163] Fafner, Siegfried Wanderer 5 ‘The dead can tell no tidings’ 2:30 [p. 152] TT 74:33 [p. 00] Siegfried, Woodbird 6 7 CHAN 3045 BOOK.qxd 13/7/07 3:15 pm Page 8 COMPACT DISC FOUR Time Page 1 ‘My woodbird fluttered away’ 0:35 [p. 164] Siegfried 2 ‘Young man, hear me’ 6:18 [p. 164] Wanderer, Siegfried 3 ‘Child, if you knew who I am’ 5:44 [p. 166] Wanderer, Siegfried 4 ‘With his spear in splinters’ 7:19 [p. 167] Siegfried Anthony Crickmay/TheatreV & A Museum, Scene 3 5 ‘Here in the sunlight’ 4:00 [p. 168] Siegfried 6 ‘Come, my sword!’ 11:49 [p. 169] Siegfried 7 ‘Hail, bright sunlight!’ 4:30 [p. 170] Brünnhilde, Siegfried 8 ‘Siegfried! Siegfried! Glorious hero!’ 8:30 [p. 170] Brünnhilde, Siegfried 9 ‘And there is Grane, my sacred horse’ 9:11 [p. 172] Brünnhilde, Siegfried 10 ‘Oh! I cared always’ 15:01 [p. 173] Brünnhilde, Siegfried TT 73:01 [p. 011 Siegfried, Act I, Scene 1 8 9 CHAN 3045 BOOK.qxd 13/7/07 3:15 pm Page 10 through, so to speak, with Tristan. That he Wagner could start on the music. At first he Richard Wagner: Siegfried should go on to complete the Ring and, was planning just one opera, which would end through his own efforts, have it performed in on a note of optimism with the moral and An Introduction to ‘The Ring of the condition that he renounce love, is invested a purpose-built theatre is nothing short of a physical superiority of the gods firmly Nibelung’ with dignity as well as malignity. miracle. established. The comment by one of his Wagner conceived the idea of a musical drama Wagner worked on the words and music for His sources included five epics, in Icelandic, friends that the story required an unrealistic on the subject of the Nibelung myth in 1848, several years, starting with a résumé of the Middle High German and Old Norse, all amount of background knowledge on the part at around the time he completed the last of his story in prose before embarking on the text of dating from the thirteenth century. As with all of the audience caused him first to expand traditional operas, Lohengrin. The Ring of the what he called The Death of Siegfried his operas, before and after the Ring, Wagner The Death of Siegfried and then to add what Nibelung can be enjoyed on many levels: as a (‘Siegfrieds Tod’). By December 1856, wrote his own words. But, to the alarm of his we would now call a ‘prequel’, Young Siegfried fairy story, political allegory or philosophical however, he informed a friend that ‘the friends, starting with The Death of Siegfried he (‘Der junge Siegfried’). Seeing the need for tract, for instance. In essence it deals with the Nibelungs are beginning to bore me’; indeed revived an old poetic device called ‘Stabreim’ still further expansion backwards, he wrote the timeless struggle between good and evil and he abandoned the Ring the following summer that made use of explosive alliteration rather texts of The Valkyrie and The Rhinegold. Young the contrast between the love of power and the and did not resume its composition until than scansion and rhyme. This was of a piece Siegfried was eventually renamed Siegfried and power of love. Wotan, chief of the gods, wants 1869, by which time he had written Tristan with his theories, expounded in essays written The Death of Siegfried became Twilight of the power for ultimately benign purposes; and Isolde and The Mastersingers of Nuremberg. from his exile in Zürich, which were Gods, with significant omissions and changes, Alberich, chief of the Nibelungs, dwarfs who From conception to completion the gigantic concerned among other things with the one of the latter being to the ending where the live underground, wants it for his own evil project took him twenty-six years: years of interdependence of verbal and musical sounds gods now perished in the flames of their castle, ends. From Monteverdi’s Orfeo to Mozart’s turmoil both in his personal life and on the and the need for sung words to be audible; Valhalla. Acknowledging the influence of the The Magic Flute, from Rameau’s Hippolyte et political stage of Europe. from which it followed that ensembles and Oresteia and the Prometheus plays of Aeschylus, Aricie to Weber’s Der Freischütz, the It was not just boredom that led him, as he choruses would no longer be appropriate. Wagner described the Ring as a trilogy (The juxtaposition of light and darkness has put it, to leave his young Siegfried under the As it turned out, Wagner did not always Rhinegold being by way of an hors-d’œuvre). fascinated composers of opera. Wagner linden tree, where he ‘bade him farewell with follow his own precepts: there is a full-blown In 1854 Wagner was introduced to the recognised that all is not black and white but heartfelt tears’. Having fled Dresden to avoid quintet, as well as choruses galore, in The writings of the philosopher Arthur very largely shades of grey. Thus, Wotan being arrested for his involvement in the Mastersingers, and a chorus and a trio in the Schopenhauer – ‘a grouch of the most resorts to subterfuge and theft and describes revolution of 1848, he was living as an exile in second act of Twilight of the Gods. The opera pronounced description’, as P.G. Wodehouse’s himself as the dwarf’s alter ego, ‘Light- Zürich with scant prospect of ever seeing the that begins the Ring cycle, The Rhinegold, Bertie Wooster puts it. The revised ending to Alberich’ while Alberich, who after all acquires Ring staged; and his compositional style was provides a good example of Wagnerian theory the story of the Ring had been written before the Rhinegold by complying with the changing so radically that he needed to work it in practice, but much work lay ahead before then; but Wagner wrote several different 10 11 CHAN 3045 BOOK.qxd 13/7/07 3:15 pm Page 12 endings thereafter, while engaged in the Act II of Beethoven’s Fidelio, that the sleeping Of the many delights of the Ring, not the revivals of Wagner’s earlier operas.