Wagner’s Ring Cycle: a short synopsis

DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN

A music drama performed over three days and a preliminary evening

Running time 14-16 hours (depending on the conductor: Keilbert ultra fast, Goodall ultra slow.

Synopsis

Wotan and Fricka are about to move into their lovely new home, but first they must pay the contractors, the giant builders Fasolt and Fafner (bros.), who are, even now, at the door. Why Wotan thought it would be a good idea to offer payment in the form of Fricka’s sister Freia is unclear. But a contract is a contract and the builders leave with their payment.
You only ever get what you pay for. It might have seemed like a bargain at the time, but the true cost of this contract is becoming apparent. For reason Wotan had forgotten that Freia is the keeper of the magic golden apples, without which the Gods will age and die. With Freia gone the Gods begin to lose their life-force.
Re-negotiating a contract is always tricky, particularly after the fact, but the giants agree to return Freia in exchange for the famed golden hoard of the Nibelungens (a tribe of royal dwarfs who live over Nidelheim way).
The Nibelungens are represented in the Ring by two tiresome brothers, named Alberich and Mime. At the beginning of the cycle we find Alberich in the process of stealing the eponymous ring from the three Rhinemaidens – Woglinde, Wellgunde and Flosshilde – an act that confers on him all the world’s power.
Alberich’s techie brother Mime has made a magic helmet called the Tarnhelm that allows anyone wearing it to change form, or even to become invisible. Wotan teases Alberich, saying that he does not believe the helmet has the powers professed of it. Oh yes it does, says Alberich. Oh no it doesn’t, says Wotan. Oh yes it does, says Alberich, turning himself into a mouse. Too late! Wotan seals the mouse-shaped Alberich into a little box and heads off back to Valhalla with ring, golden hoard and mouse-shaped dwarf. So much for being in possession of all the power of the world. Now Wotan has it.
Alberich does, at least, manage to curse the ring as it is taken from him. It is this curse, rather than the power of the ring itself, that ultimately brings about the downfall of gods, and hence of everything.
Wotan has it in mind that he will hand over the hoard yet hold on to the cursed ring. The giants aren’t so easily fooled, and insist that the ring is part of the Nibelungen hoard and theirs by rights. It’s less than two hours into the cycle and the giants have become the fourth owners of the ring.
The cursed ring spells TROUBLE. It’s not long before the brothers are fighting. One of them kills the other, always hard to remember which. The surviving brother moves into a cave, and turns himself into a dragon. The ring remains here, in the dragon’s protection, until the third opera: Siegfried.

The Ring was written over a period of 26 years from 1848 to 1874. For the first five years Wagner devoted himself to writing the libretto, beginning at the end of the story, then called the Death of Siegfried. He worked his way backwards to Das Rheingold, at which point he began to write the music. (Wagner did not call his operas operas but music dramas.) In 1857 Wagner got to the end of the second act of Siegfried, at which point he put the score to one side while he wrote Tristan and Isolde (the work that set classical music on its modern course) and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg his only comic opera. (Aside: In James Joyces’s Ulysses the author invents the world’s worst twelve books, among them: ‘Let’s all chortle (hilaric) and Who’s who in space (astric)’. Might I suggest, Wagner the comedian (farcical).)
When Wagner returned to the Ring twelve years later, his sound world had changed. The third act of Siegfried is generally taken to be a highlight of the cycle, the first two acts are the least successful parts of the cycle. Though Ring productions invariably sell out, sometimes years in advance, it is always possible to get tickets to Siegfried, except perhaps at Bayreuth where tickets are offered on a lottery basis.

Bayreuth: the wooden opera house that Wagner built as a place of pilgrimage. Situated in the town of Bayreuth, where there is nothing to distract the Wagnerite, or any one else for that matter, which is why Wagner chose it. Only the works of Wagner are performed here. The seats are wooden benches. The audience is locked in (yes, actually locked in) for the duration of each act. Das Rheingold plays for 2 and a half hours without a break. The first act of Gotterdammerung is about 2 hours long. Wagner acknowledged that his music is addictive. He constructed a three-day cold turkey cure consisting entirely of Bach cantatas.

Wagner had initially intended the Ring to end with the redemption of the Gods, but after the twelve-year interregnum/writer’s block he decided to end instead with their annihilation. Optimism is replaced by pessimism. The Death of Siegfried was re-titled Gotterdammerung, somewhat tweely translated into English as the Twilight of the Gods.
Erda’s early gloomy prophecy comes true. The Gods are indeed doomed.
Erda is the goddess of the earth. The nine unruly Valkyrie sisters – breast-plated, horn-helmeted, spear-carrying Brunnhilde, Waltraute, Helmwige, Gerhilde, Siegrune, Schwertleite, Ortlinde, Grimgerde, Rossweisse – are her children by the promiscuous Wotan. Erda is also mother – though not by Wotan – to the Norns, the three sisters who weave the fabric of reality that Erda predicts will soon unravel.
The Ring opens with a famous 136-bar chord of E flat major that sounds for almost 4 minutes, and represents the creation of the universe. Wagner pushed harmony to the limits of lushness but here prefigures minimalism. The last opera of the cycle heralds the demise of the universe by sounding out the chord of E flat minor.
It is generally agreed that the masterpiece of the cycle – along with Act III of Siegfried already mentioned – is the second opera, Die Walkure, the story of twins Siegmund and Sieglinde. Their father is, unknown to them, Wotan, who else? Mother is some mortal or other.
It is a dark and stormy night. Siegmund seeks shelter. Sieglinde takes him in. She is married to Hunding, who as luck would have it is just the person Siegmund is fleeing. Hunding returns and vows to kill Siegmund in the morning, but rules of etiquette dictate that until then he is a guest in the house. (Etymological aside: host and hostile have the same root.) The twins tell their stories, which turn out to be the same story. They recognise themselves, by which time they have fallen in love. By morning Sieglinde is pregnant.
Meanwhile, back at Valhalla, Fricka – one of her goddess duties is protector of the marriage bed – has tuned in to Hunding’s prayer for vengeance. She is disgusted by the incestuousness of the twins.
Wotan is lord of all the Gods but he is also a hen-pecked husband. And yet though the marriage is sexless, Wotan loves Fricka.
The plot of the ring doesn’t hold together, as is clear after even the most cursory reading. The story is ridiculous and riddled with inconsistencies but the marriage of music and words  – as music drama – is so powerful on the symbolic level that it quickly sank deep into the dark creative consciousness of the 20th century.
Wotan had hatched some complicated scheme, begun in the mists of time, to thwart Alberich’s curse, but now his plans have been thwarted by his wife.
Brunnhilde is mortified that her beloved father should be so distressed. She vows to stand in as Siegmund’s defender and as Wotan’s will. Wotan shakes his spear at her. He tells her that his will is that Siegmund must die. She quakes. She agrees to toe the line, even though she knows that Wotan has forfeited his will to Fricka’s.
When it comes to it, Brunnhilde is so moved by the mortal love Siegmund expresses for Sieglinde that she defies Wotan. Siegmund  refuses to accompany Brunnhilde to the halls of dead heroes if that means he can never again be with Sieglinde. Brunnhilde is amazed that anyone might forgo deathlessness for oblivion. She begins to understand that love is more powerful even than death. Wotan intervenes and kills Siegmund (and Hunding). Brunnhilde flees. By the end of the second opera Brunnhilde has been put into a deep sleep as punishment, though she does manage to strike a bargain:  a hero who is willing to cross the threshold of fire will be permitted to wake her and win her heart. Wotan and Brunnhilde declare their deep love for each other, and he sings his famous farewell to her: Lebe wohl.
That hero is, of course, going to be Siegfried, the child swelling in Sieglinde’s belly.

From here on in the Ring cycle begins to fail as drama. Wagner has painted himself into a corner. How could Wagner create a greater hero in Siegfried than Siegmund? He can’t, he couldn’t and he didn’t. Siegfried is meant to be a child of nature – a kind a holy innocent, better characterised as Parsifal in Wagner’s final opera – but here he more often comes across as an ingrate. We even begin to feel sympathy for Mime, who has brought him up. Mime’s motives may not be honorable, but Siegfried doesn’t know that – at least not at first.
Mime is in possession of the fragments of Siegmund’s sword, which he continually tries and fails to re-forge.
The third opera of the cycle plods through the life of the hero. The sword is re-forged by Siegfried from instructions delivered to him by a woodbird. Siegfried kills the dragon, takes the ring. Mime is killed by his brother. Wotan wanders in and out disguised as Der Wanderer. In the third act Brunnhilde is awoken. Siegfried and Brunnhilde declare their love for each other.

In the last opera the plot thickens and darkens. Hagen is introduced: the progeny of Alberich and a mortal woman. He is the dark counterpoint to Siegfried. The Tarnhelm comes to the fore once again. (I hate that Tarnhelm, my companion said to me the last time I saw the cycle. I agreed.)
A love potion is brought into play to trick Siegfried into a love match with Hagen’s half sister Gutrune: a device recapitulated from Tristan and Isolde. Oh it all gets too tedious. Siegfried is killed. He has a weak spot it turns out. Funny no one mentioned it before. It is his back. He is not protected there because, as a hero, he would never flee an enemy. Brunnhilde tortured by his apparent love for Gutrune reveals this secret.
The body of the hero is carried down the Rhine in a famous sequence of music. Brunnhilde takes back the ring that her former lover had once placed on her finger. In a final gesture, she immolates herself, riding onto the pyre astride Siegfried’s horse, Grane. In the last sequence of sung music she makes her farewells to the world and to her horse, declaring her love for Siegfried. She was once a deathless god, but now she, too, willingly embraces oblivion. And all for love.
The banks of the Rhine burst. Valhalla is destroyed, and all the world with it. Hagen reaches out for the ring with a last cry, but the Rhinemaidens rise up to reclaim it. The opera finishes as it began, as a portrait of nothingness.