|
 What
is Wagner’s Der Ring des Niebelungen?
(Miyake Yukio, Music Critic)
Wagner’s tetralogy Der Ring des Niebelungen (The
Ring of the Niebelung) is a musical extravaganza taking
more than 10 hours to perform. Heavenly gods ruled by Wotan,
ground-dwelling giants, one of whom is Fafner and Niebelung
dwarfs, led by Alberich, who live beneath the earth, contend
fiercely for the Ring that is believed to give its holder
the power to rule the world. The hero Siegfried is ordained
to save this cursed world but is suddenly entrapped and
killed by Hagen, son of Alberich. And when Siegfried’s
wife Brünnhilde, daughter of Wotan, plunges into the
flaming funeral pyre, fires and floods destroy the rule
of the gods. Thus the Ring can be interpreted as a story
that illustrates the entire process of the collapse of one
period in human history from its beginning to its end. Although
through the Ring, Wagner pessimistically viewed the 19th-century
capitalist society, in which love was lost and only power
and wealth were pursued, his caustic criticism is still
valid in the present day. From the bough of the World Ash
Tree, Wotan cuts and shapes the shaft of a spear, causing
the tree to wither, and Alberich steals the gold from the
Rhinemaidens, forswears love and forges the Ring from the
gold. In other words, the Ring also deals with the concept
that the beginning of the fall of the world lies in the
usurpation of Nature, a theme found in reality. For this
reason, it is quite natural that stage direction plays an
important role in the production of the Ring, given that
the setting is not bound by any particular time or place.
<Synopsis and Highlights>
In the Prologue of Götterdämmerung, the
three Norns, guardians of fate, recall the events that have
led up to the beginning of this final opera of the tetralogy
and then prophesize that the end of the gods is at hand.
Siegfried and Brünnhilde, united in requited love,
sing together ardently, “Getrennt---wer will es scheiden?
Geschieden---trennt es sich nie! (Apart, who shall separate
us? Separate, we shall never part!)” as Siegfried
leaves her for deeds of valor, but the “betrayal,”
which is to separate the two, is already imminent.
Act I: When the hero Siegfried visits
the castle of the Gibichungs, he is given a magic potion
that destroys his past memories and quickly forgets Brünnhilde,
falling in love with Gutrune. He and Gunther swear an oath
of blood brotherhood, and Siegfried promises to win Brünnhilde
for Gunther. All this is a plan by Hagen, son of Alberich.
Meanwhile, Waltraute comes to Brünnhilde to beg her
to return the Ring to the Rhinemaidens, but Brünnhilde
refuses to yield the Ring that Siegfried has given her as
a token of his love. As punishment for not relinquishing
the Ring, Brünnhilde is forcefully taken by a man in
Gunther’s form (Siegfried has used the Tarnhelm to
disguise himself), and the Ring is wrenched from her finger.
This is perhaps the cruelest of scenes in the Ring, even
if the circumstances under which Siegfried was given the
magic potion are taken into account.
Act II: The dialogue between Alberich
and Hagen makes it clear that Götterdämmerung
represents a proxy war between Alberich and Wotan. In front
of guests who gathered to attend Siegfried and Gutrune’s
wedding feast, Brünnhilde bitterly accuses Siegfried,
saying she is his real wife and that she was taken advantage
of by him on the night she was forced into the cave. Siegfried,
who protests that he followed the tradition of proposing
marriage by proxy, has to swear his innocence on the tip
of Hagen’s spear. Brünnhilde is furious with
rage, Hagen is gunning for the Ring and Gunther is disgraced.
The three agree that Siegfried must die.
Act III: The Rhinemaidens warn Siegfried
about the curse of the Ring, but he rejects their pleas
to return it to them. He is then joined by his hunting companions
and begins to reminisce about his adventures. Hagen offers
him a drink into which he has put an antidote to the earlier
magic potion; his memory restored, Siegfried tells how he
won Brünnhilde. Hagen stabs him in the back, announcing
vengeance. In the hall of the Gibichungs, where Siegfried’s
body is brought, Hagen claims his right to the Ring and
fatally wounds Gunther. When Brünnhilde ignites her
husband’s funeral pyre and plunges into the flames
condemning the gods, the old world ruled by the gods is
destroyed by fires and floods. Will a similar history be
repeated or will a better world be the outcome after this
catastrophe? The end is equivocal.
<The Tokyo Ring—Past
Performances>
Das Rheingold,
performed in 2001
In his staging, Keith Warner replaces the traditional
ending of Das Rheingold (The Rhinegold) in the “preliminary
evening” with the scene of the large hall in the newly
built Valhalla. As balloons in seven different colors fall
from above onto the floor of the white hall (reminiscent
of a mental asylum), a display of power of the gods, a party
announcing the completion of the new castle is in progress,
with gods from the world over invited. Like a young business
manager who has constructed a new building for his company
without using his own funds, Wotan, the ruler of the gods,
looks quite satisfied and, obsessed with his “Grand
Idea,” sings, “So grüss’ ich die
Burg (Thus I salute the fortress).” Of course, the
Grand Idea is none other than letting a hero, one of his
descendants, regain the Ring without getting involved himself.
Passing on the bill to the next generation not yet born—a
theme that rings true if ever there were one. This egotistic
character of Wotan and the majestic appearance of Valhalla
are sharply underscored by the voice of the Rhinemaidens,
who were made homeless when the gold was stolen, singing,
“Falsch und feig ist, was dort oben sich freut! (False
and faint-hearted are those who revel above).”
Die Walküre,
performed in 2002
The long Act II is the best part of the performance
of Die Walküre (The Valkyrie). Fricka, Wotan’s
wife, reveals her husband’s fraudulent acts with an
incisive tongue, and Brünnhilde, his beloved daughter,
is shocked to see visualizations of what happened in the
past. This is the moment when her respect for and confidence
in her father are shaken to their foundations. Twin brother
and sister, Siegmund and Sieglinde, are the first victims
to fall to the Grand Idea. Fricka, goddess of marriage,
does not forgive the twin siblings for engaging in a forbidden
relationship (illicit love and incest), and Wotan has no
choice but to abandon the two in order to save himself.
This confrontation between husband and wife and between
parent and child is in fact something found in today’s
troubled families, rather than something in world of the
gods. Sieglinde fruitlessly looks for an exit from the stage,
which is sealed like a miniature garden, while Siegmund
dies a pitiful death that is nothing less than the throwing
away of his life. The dignity of love possessed by Siegmund,
who chose his poor sister over the glory of Valhalla in
the midst of this tragedy, is handed over to Brünnhilde.
Siegfried, performed
in 2003
The second act of Siegfried is exceptionally long
and usually tests the staying power of even the most enthusiastic
Wagnerians, but in this performance it feels very short.
The folk tales set in the German woods (Märchen) are
transposed into a story of a motherless family in contemporary
America, and the opera is staged so that Siegfried re-forges
the mighty sword, a keepsake of his real father Siegmund,
using the difference in temperature between the microwave
oven and the freezer. Warner’s staging presents a
series of novel and original ideas at a quick tempo, not
unlike machinegun fire, but they never end as mere jokes,
which is perhaps what makes Warner who he is. Siegfried’s
stepfather Mime tells Siegfried that Sieglinde died giving
birth to him, but contrary to Mime’s words, he gesticulates
that he himself raped and strangled Sieglinde. While making
the audience laugh with his comical lines and gestures,
Mime, just for an instant, allows the audience a glimpse
of the murder that led Siegfried to subconsciously hate
Mime; in other words, the audience glimpses the unknown
dark side of the story of the Ring.
|
