Everyone has
a bucket list, and one of the items on mine—and my husband, Steve’s—is seeing
Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen,
known as the Ring Cycle. (Literally, it means the ring of the Nibelungen, a
race of dwarves who live underground.) For those who are not familiar with
opera, Wagner was an EXTREME composer who wrote a four-part opera that runs 16
hours. Only the strong can last through the entire series. We could not afford
to see the Ring Cycle at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, but fortunately,
the Met version was filmed and shown at our local movie theater so that impoverished
opera fans, such as we, could enjoy it.
The operas premiered
between 1869 and 1876 in Munich and Bayreuth, Germany, both of which are in
Bavaria, where they drink lots of beer and wear lederhosen. The composer, Wilhelm
Richard Wagner, led a life characterized by political exile, stormy love
affairs, poverty and repeated flight from his creditors. His Ring Cycle takes
four days to see in its entirety. The story is about the downfall of the Norse
gods and it is a combination of Lord of
the Rings, Sleeping Beauty, The Sword and the Stone, The Towering
Inferno and The Days of Our Lives
(Norse style) all wrapped up into one.
The Rhinemaidens from the original Das Reingold production. |
Part One—Das Reingold (the gold of the Rhine
River) is about three snarky Rhinemaidens who guard a hoard of gold at the
bottom of the Rhine River, and an angry dwarf, Alberich, who steals it from them.
Alberich forges a magical ring and
helmet from the gold, and tries to take over the world. At the same time, the
Norse gods have hired two giants to build Valhalla, a castle on a high mountain
where the gods plan to live. (It is not clear where the gods were sacking out
before then, but they seem pretty excited about having a house.)
Wotan, leader
of the Norse gods, promises the giants one of his daughters, the Goddess of
Youth, as payment for the house. (After all, a woman is a woman, but a castle is
a place with indoor chamber pots and tuberculosis.) Then some of her brothers point out to dad
that if the Goddess of Youth leaves, no one will be able to maintain the enchanted
apple trees which give them all eternal life. (Got to think these things
through, Wotan. Real estate is not always a good investment, especially versus
immortality.) So Wotan and the trickster Fire God, Loge, steal the dwarf’s gold
(after all, it was already stolen) and re-gift it to the giants in lieu of Wotan’s
daughter. (The dwarf, naturally, has cursed the gold ring so whoever wears it
is somewhat doomed.)
One giant
puts the golden ring on his finger, decides he doesn’t want to share the rest
of the gold and kills the other giant, who is his brother. He finds a cave on
the edge of the forest, turns himself into a dragon—because the helmet has
magical powers—and makes a career of guarding his gold.
The Valkyries, circa 1870: Wotan's
goddess daughters rode
into battle to bring the
souls of dead heroes back to Valhalla..
|
Part Two—Die Walküre (the Valkyries) is about a
brother, Siegmund, and sister, Sieglinde, who fall in love and want to get
married, but Sieglinde is already married to a horrible man who kidnapped her when
he burned the family house down and killed their mother. And you thought The
Housewives of New Jersey was lurid?
Coincidentally, Siegmund and Sieglinde are the children of Wotan and a woman he
fooled around with behind his wife’s back.
Wotan’s wife, Fricka, who is also
the Goddess of Marriage, is not very happy about the incest thing or the
violation of Sieglinde’s “sacred” marriage. So Fricka makes Wotan promise he
will not help Siegmund in battle against the angry husband. Wotan has left a
magical sword imbedded in a tree trunk—a phallic symbol that only Siegmund can
extract. But Wotan will have to break that sword and let Sieglinde’s horrible husband
impale Siegmund. Eventually, that’s what happens, but not before one of Wotan’s
Valkyrie daughters, Brünnhilde, tries to save the incestuous young lovers
because she knows that’s what her father really wanted.
(Yes, this is very
complex and it gets even worse.) For trying to help the young couple, Brünnhilde
is punished by Wotan. She is stripped of her immortality and left in a sleep
state, and can only be awakened by a man who knows no fear. (In today’s world,
such a man would be known as a psychopath, but in ancient Norse times, he was
revered.) The last thing Brünnhilde does before she is left comatose on a
mountaintop is to send Sieglinde off to a remote forest because she is pregnant
with her dead brother’s baby. (Reality shows be damned!) Thus ends part two.
Part Three—Siegfried, is about that baby. An ugly
dwarf, Mime, steals the baby, Siegfried, from Sieglinde while she lies dying
after childbirth. He also steals the enchanted broken sword from Sieglinde that
Siegfried’s father wielded in his fatal battle. (Coincidentally, Mime is the
brother of the dwarf, Alberich, who originally stole the Reingold.)
Mime knows,
somehow, that Siegfried will grow up to kill the dragon guarding the gold and
he wants to control Siegfried to get to that fortune. Siegfried melts down the broken
sword and forges a new one. Then he runs off and kills the dragon. Upon tasting
the dragon’s blood on his sword, he is imbued with the ability to understand
people’s thoughts, at least for one scene. He learns his dwarf “father,” Mime,
hates him and intends to poison him and take all the gold. So Siegfried runs
him in with the magical sword (like any self-respecting psychopath) and goes
merrily on his way to find his sleeping bride, whom he learned about from a
magical talking bird. He finds Brünnhilde, wakes her with a kiss, and they fall
in love. Naturally, there is much singing.
Wagner in one of his happier moments. |
Part Four—is
Götterdämmerung (the twilight of the
gods). Siegfried gives his cursed gold ring to Brünnhilde and she gives him her steed,
Grane, who has slept along with her all these years. (Grane wakes up when Brünnhilde
does. As far as the viewer knows, Siegfried does not have to revive the horse
with a kiss.) Siegfried rides off into the world to do heroic deeds. He’s given
a potion to forget Brünnhilde by a sister and brother who want to marry Siegfried
and Brünnhilde, respectively. It’s very complicated, but it all boils down to this:
Siegfried is stabbed to death, Brünnhilde builds a funeral a pyre for him and
jumps into it, and Valhalla and the gods are engulfed in fire. The only happy campers
in the end are the Rhinemaidens, who finally, after four days of opera, get their
gold ring back and sing joyfully about it. Karma, I guess.
And there
you have it. So what have we learned from this larger-than-life soap opera of
the gods encompassing sex, power, betrayal, incest, deception, murder and
self-immolation—all sung to 16 hours of powerhouse music? If you’re walking
along the Rhine River in Germany and see three snarky Rhinemaidens goofing off
when they ought to be guarding their gold, back away slowly….
What a riot!!!!! Being a singer and a devotee of Wagner, one really needs a sense of humor!
ReplyDeleteThank you. Yes, Wagner demands a certain fortitude.
DeleteOMG, even YOU can't make 16 hours of Wagner sound good. At least THAT'S off the bucket list! On to better things...
ReplyDelete