Bryn Terfel may have cancelled his date with Wagner’s Ring Cycle, but you’re
still keeping the faith. Those tickets are booked, and the preparatory CDs
have been bought. 14 hours of Teutonic myth are looming menacingly on the
October horizon.
But even if you’ve already seen Keith Warner’s Royal Opera production in its
instalments, you might be forgiven for asking: just what does the whole
thing mean?
The good news is that thousands of musicologists, philosophers and general
Wagner pundits have had a go at answering that question. The bad news is
that, as a result, there are more theories flying about on the ultimate
meaning of Wagner’s Ring than there are about who shot JFK.
Never mind. That’s part of the fun. If Warner’s staging hasn’t followed one
route, at least it has opened up a tantalising set of references to navigate
by. What follows are just a few paths through the labyrinth.
JUST A FAIRYTALE
That argument may have worked for Tolkien when he plundered Wagner to come up
with Gandalf, the hobbits and “one ring to rule them all”, but the great man
himself had other ideas. And it’s just as well, as 25 years spent simply
recycling a set of medieval poems really would have been a waste of time.
That’s the reason directors insist on reshaping and reimagining the Ring
with every new production, and why every time they do so you find the
inevitable chorus of naysayers asking for their beloved operas to be given
the proper, naturalistic treatment.
But Wagner used myth and legend for a reason – he thought it was the best way
to make us agree with his radical agenda. Just as the Greek tragedians
depicted gods and monsters, so Wagner turned to Norse mythology in the
service of his radical vision of the world.
Classic example Otto Schenk, Metropolitan Opera, New York, 1986.
Quaint, pretty, and entirely vacuous.
Does it fit with the Royal Opera’s staging? Thankfully, no. Keith
Warner’s Ring plays out in grim laboratories, bourgeois
salons and office towers – not picture perfect mountaintops.
IT’S POLITICAL
It certainly started that way. The composer who began the Ring in
1848, was, after all, a fully paid-up socialist revolutionary. A year later
he was exiled from Dresden for subversive activity and had published a poem
entitled The Revolution, in which he wrote: “I will destroy every
wrong. I will destroy the domination of one man over another. I will shatter
the power of the mighty, of the law and of property.”
Broadly speaking, the central plot of the Ring tallies. Its main
thrust is, after all, the transfer of power (via the ring itself) from one
authority (the Gods, led by Wotan) to another – mankind, of whom the hero
Siegfried is the shining example. Wagner believed that too much power was
concentrated in the hands of a privileged elite. And, inspired by a new
generation of agnostic thinkers, he felt blind religious faith could only
hinder the establishment of a more just world order (led, naturally, by
artists such as him).
Classic example Patrice Chéreau, Bayreuth Festival, 1976. The Ringmet
the Industrial Revolution, with stunning results.
Does it fit with the Royal Opera’s staging? Undoubtedly. Here the
gods sit around in smoking jackets as their sweaty engineers (the giants,
Fafner and Fasolt) build Valhalla for them.
IT’S PHILOSOPHICAL
Well, yes – but whose philosophy? By the time Wagner completed the Ring
in the 1870s he had forgotten his wild-child socialism and turned to a
much more abstruse master: Schopenhauer, a grim German who cheerily wrote
about how all of life’s pursuits were ultimately pointless, because they
couldn’t connect us to the ineffable mysteries of the unconscious. So much
for getting the ring out of the hands of despots and into the hands of the
idealists: direct action of that sort is ultimately futile.
That’s why the cycle seems to turn inwards as it reaches its conclusion, and
why you’re quite likely to be mystified the first time you hear Siegfried’s
love duet with Brünnhilde – a conversation dominated by talk of “laughing
death” and “enlightening love” rather than, say, one of them suggesting they
go for a romantic supper. In Schopenhauer-speak, only a metaphysical love
can bring any lasting satisfaction.
Arguably it’s this bleak sort of hope that drives the Ring on
to its (literally) incendiary climax. In Götterdämmerung,
having snatched the ring from Siegfried’s corpse, Brünnhilde hails the
destructive power of fire – and her imminent suicide – as the only release
from all the scheming that Wotan and the gods should never have embarked on
in the first place.
Classic example David Alden, Munich, 2003. Giant rats invade the stage
at the climax. Doesn’t get much more pessimistic than that.
Does it fit with the Royal Opera’s staging? The final note of
Warner’s Götterdämmerung is optimistic – a child,
borne aloft from the crowd – but both this final opera and Siegfried
are saturated in appropriately abstract gloom.
FREUDIAN SLIPS
You don’t have to be a psychiatrist to know that most of the characters of the
Ring have serious issues. But what’s astonishing is how
perceptively Wagner reacts to them. Siegfried, the hero who supposedly knows
no fear, is gripped by a primeval panic when he meets his first woman
(Brünnhilde) and nervously wonders if she might be his mother. Wotan’s
existential plight – he can only get the ring by breaking the very rules he
set the world to live by – is a fascinating portrait of a split personality.
Others have gone even further down the psychoanalytical route. What is
Siegfried’s quest to forge his broken “sword” all about if not the angst of
puberty? From a Jungian analysis – yes, this has been done – Wotan’s plight
is classic ego versus anima, and his daughters (the warrior Valkyries) are
just a manifestation of his unconscious. Seen like this, the entire story
could even be seen as taking place inside Wotan’s head.
Classic example Wieland Wagner, Bayreuth, 1951. Abstract settings,
deeply symbolic scenery. Some say it’s never been bettered.
Does it fit with the Royal Opera’s staging? At times, very much
so: Wotan gives Brünnhilde a full-on snog before sending her to mortal sleep
– a disturbingly plausible look into his particular psyche.
IT’S ECO-FRIENDLY
Could the Ringbe the first environmentally friendly opera? It starts,
after all, with an act of pollution – the theft of the magic Rhinegold from
the watery Rhinemaidens. Wagner idolised nature, and the Ring can
be seen as a grim parable of environmental catastrophe.
All the goodies in the operas – Brünnhilde, Siegfried, Siegmund – tend to
revel in the beauty of the natural world. All the baddies – Wotan, Alberich,
Hagen – do things to disrupt it. Wotan’s very authority derives from an act
of desecration, when he broke his spear out of the world-ash tree that holds
the earth together. And what happens at the end – Brünnhilde releasing the
ring into the waters of the Rhine – could be seen as atonement.
Classic example Stephen Wadsworth, Seattle, 2001. A vision in green –
and there was even a real horse.
Does it fit with the Royal Opera’s staging? Warner’s Rheingold
begins with naked blue Rhinemaidens, but by the time we get to Götterdämmerung,
the Rhine has wind turbines and factories lining its shores.
ALL HAIL THE ARYANS
Not a popular theory for die-hard Wagnerites, but you don’t have to be a
raging conspiracy theorist to notice that it’s the blondes in the Ring
who get the best tunes. Hell, there’s even a “master race”: the Volsungs,
spawned by Wotan himself to further his plans for world domination by proxy.
Their resulting progeny is the musclebound, blue-eyed Siegfried, whom Wagner
once called “the man of the future”.
Still, it’s a long stretch from there to argue that Wagner would have
applauded the Nazis’ acts of genocide. Plenty of scholars have tried it:
they say Wagner gives the dwarfs “Jewish-sounding” music, and stereotypes
them as money-grabbing fools. Then again, that’s pretty much the universal
cliché for dwarfs.
Classic example It would be a brave director who tackled antiSemitism
head-on without being misunderstood. We are still waiting.
Does it fit with the Royal Opera’s staging? Warner’s conniving
dwarfs are more like diligent scientists than dwarfs; the “Jewish” question
is thankfully irrelevant.
A FEMINIST MANIFESTO
Trust the Germaine Greer generation to have a go redeeming all the swaggering
machismo of Siegfried and his giant sword. But the truth is they have a
point: for every bumbling man in the Ring, there’s a woman with a
much better argument. Wotan is permanently in thrall to the mysterious Earth
Mother, Erda. His wife Fricka does a magnficent job of exposing what a
shortsighted buffoon he is. And, most importantly, at the close of the
entire thing, it’s a woman who survives long enough to realise that by
sacrificing herself she can save the world. What better endorsement of
feminine intuition is there?
Classic example Phyllida Lloyd, English National Opera, 2005.
Brünnhilde learns her lesson after turning from bullied wife to
suicide-bombing superhero.
Does it fit with the Royal Opera’s staging? There’s a lot in the
pot, but girl power doesn’t seem to be one of the ingredients. Yet.
The Ring Cycle, Royal Opera House, London WC2 (www.roh.org.uk/ring
020-7304 4000), from Oct 2
