Der Ring des Nibelungen
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Der Ring des Nibelungen or, translated commonly as The Ring of the Nibelungen into English but more correctly as The Nibelung's Ring, is a series of four epic operas. Both the libretto and the music were written by Richard Wagner over the course of twenty-six years, from 1848 to 1874.
The four operas in the Ring cycle are:
- Das Rheingold (The Rhinegold)
- Die Walküre (The Valkyrie)
- Siegfried
- Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods)
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Content
The Ring is a work of extraordinary scale and scope. Its most obvious quality, for a first-time listener, is its sheer length: a full performance of the cycle takes place over four nights at the opera, with a total playing time of about 15 hours, depending on the conductor's pacing. The first and shortest opera, Rheingold, typically clocks in at two and a half hours, while the last and longest, Götterdämmerung, can take up to five hours in performance.
The scale and scope of the story is epic. It follows the struggles of gods, heroes, and several mythical creatures, over the eponymous magic Ring that grants domination over the entire world. The drama and intrigue continues through three generations of protagonists, until the final cataclysm at the end of Götterdämmerung.
The music of the Ring is thick and richly textured, and grows in complexity as the cycle proceeds. Wagner wrote for an orchestra of gargantuan proportions. The Ring was written specifically for Wagner's own theatre in Bayreuth, for which a special stage was constructed which allowed the blending of the huge orchestra with the singers' voices, allowing them to sing at a natural volume. The result was that the singers did not have to strain themselves vocally during the long performances. The acoustics of this performance space are among the best in the world. In other performance venues singers sometimes find it difficult to achieve this balance between voice and orchestra.
Story
The plot revolves around a magic ring that grants the power to rule the world, forged by the Nibelung dwarf Alberich from gold stolen from the river Rhine. Several mythic figures struggle for possession of the Ring, including Wotan (Odin), the chief of the Gods. Wotan's scheme, spanning generations, to overcome his limitations, drives much of the action in the story. The hero Siegfried wins the Ring, as Wotan intended, but is eventually betrayed and slain. Finally, the Valkyrie Brünhilde, Siegfried's lover and Wotan's estranged daughter, returns the Ring to the Rhine. In the process, the Gods are destroyed.
For a detailed plot synopsis, see the articles for the individual operas.
Wagner created the story of the Ring by fusing elements from many German and Scandinavian myths. The Old Norse Eddas supplied much of the material for Das Rheingold, while Die Walküre was largely based on the Volsunga saga. Siegfried contains elements from the Eddas, the Volsunga Saga, the Thidreks saga, and even the Grimm brothers' fairy tale The Tale of a Boy Who Went Forth to Learn Fear. The final opera, Götterdämmerung, draws from the 12th century High German poem known as the Nibelungenlied, which appears to have been the original inspiration for the Ring, and for which the cycle was named.
In weaving these disparate sources into a coherent tale, Wagner injected many contemporary concepts. One of the principal themes in the Ring is the struggle of love, which is also associated with Nature and freedom, against power, which is associated with civilization and law. In the very first scene of the Ring, the scorned dwarf Alberich sets the plot in motion by placing a curse on love, an act that allows him to acquire the power to rule the world.
Since its inception, the Ring has been subjected to a plethora of interpretations. George Bernard Shaw, in The Perfect Wagnerite, argues for a view of the Ring as an essentially socialist critique of industrial society and its abuses. Robert Donington in Wagner's Ring and its Symbols interprets it in terms of Jungian psychology as an account of the development of unconscious archetypes in the mind, leading towards individuation. Peter Kjaerulff, in The Ringbearers Diary, interprets the Ring as an attempt to expose a structure of ideas he refers to as The Cursed Ring, which he also links to J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and Plato's The Ring of Gyges.
Music
Wagner was unsatisfied with the traditional structure of an opera as a series of distinct songs. In his previous operas, he had tried to disguise the song breaks as part of the music. For the Ring he decided to adopt a through-composed style, where each act of each opera would be a complete song with no breaks whatsoever.
As a new foundation for his operas, Wagner adopted the use of leitmotifs, recurring themes which have a symbolic meaning. (Wagner called them Grundthemas, base themes). While Wagner and other composers before him had already used leitmotifs, the Ring was unique in that it is based only on leitmotifs. Any important action is accompanied by a leitmotif, and there are long stretches of music which are made of only leitmotifs. There are dozens of leitmotifs spread through the Ring. Prominent characters and ideas each have their own leitmotif, and often a leitmotif will occur in the music to suggest a subtext to the action onstage. Many of the leitmotifs appear in several operas, and some even occur in all four.
Wagner also felt limited by the orchestration he had available to him, so he invented an instrument, the Wagner tuba, to fill a gap he found. Additionally, he had several variations of existing instruments made for the operas, such as the bass trumpet and a contrabass trombone that used a double slide.
History of the Ring Cycle
Composition
In 1848, Wagner began writing a libretto entitled Siegfrieds Tod ("Siegfried's Death"). He was likely encouraged by a series of articles in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, inviting composers to write a "national opera" based on the Nibelungenlied, a 12th century High German poem which, since its rediscovery in 1755, had been hailed by the German Romantics as the "German national epic". Siegfrieds Tod dealt with the death of Siegfried, the central heroic figure of the Nibelungenlied. Wagner drew from several other sources as the work progressed, including the Eddas, the Thidreks saga, and the Volsunga saga.
By 1850, Wagner had completed a musical sketch for Siegfrieds Tod. He now felt that he needed a preliminary opera, Der junge Siegfried ("The Young Siegfried", later renamed to "Siegfried"), in order to explain the events in Siegfrieds Tod. The verse draft of Der junge Siegfried was completed in May 1851. By October, he had decided on a cycle of four operas, to be played over four nights: Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Der Junge Siegfried and Siegfrieds Tod.
The text for all four operas was completed in December 1852, and privately published in February 1853. In November, Wagner began the composition draft of Das Rheingold. Unlike the verses, which were written from the end of the story to the beginning, the music would be composed from beginning to end. Composition proceeded until 1857, when the final score up to the end of Act II of Siegfried was completed. Wagner then laid the work aside for twelve years, during which he wrote Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.
By 1869, Wagner was living at Tribschen on Lake Lucerne, sponsored by King Ludwig II of Bavaria. At this point, he returned to Siegfried, and, remarkably, was able to pick up where he left off. In October, he completed the final opera, Götterdämmerung, as Siegfried's Tod had been renamed (since the focus of the tetralogy had shifted from Siegfried to Wotan.)
First productions
On King Ludwig's insistence, and over Wagner's objections, "special previews" of Das Rheingold and Die Walküre were given at the Munich Court Theater, before the rest of the Ring. Thus, Das Rheingold premiered on September 22 1869, and Die Walküre on June 26 1870.
Wagner had long desired to have a special festival opera house, designed by himself, for the performance of the Ring. In 1871, he decided on a location in the Bavarian town of Bayreuth. In 1872, he moved to Bayreuth, and the foundation stone was laid. Wagner would spend the next two years attempting to raise capital for the construction, with scant success; King Ludwig finally rescued the project in 1874 by donating the needed funds. The Bayreuth Festspielhaus opened in 1876 with the first complete performance of the Ring, which took place from August 13 to August 17.
Recordings of the complete Ring Cycle
The complete Ring Cycle has been performed many times, but relatively few full commercial recordings exist, probably due to financial considerations. The four operas together take about 14 hours, which makes for a lot of records, tapes, or CDs, and a lot of studio time. For this reason, many full Ring recordings are the result of "unofficial" recording of live performances, particularly from Bayreuth where new productions are often broadcast by German radio. Live recordings, especially those in mono, may have very variable sound but often preserve the excitement of a performance better than a studio recording.
Here are some of the best-known and most appreciated recordings of the complete Ring Cycle:
- Wilhelm Furtwängler conducting the La Scala Opera Orchestra, 1950. Mono sound. [Opera D'Oro]
- Wilhelm Furtwängler conducting the Orchestra Sinfonica e Coro della Radio Italiana (RAI orchestra and chorus), 1953. Mono sound. [EMI]
- Hans Knappertsbusch conducting the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, 1956. Mono sound. [Music & Arts]
- Hans Knappertsbusch conducting the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, 1958. Mono sound. [Melodram]
- Georg Solti conducting the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, 1958-1965. Stereo sound. [Decca/Polygram records]
- Herbert von Karajan conducting the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, 1967. Stereo sound. [Deutsche Grammophon/Polygram]
- Karl Böhm conducting the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, 1967. Stereo sound. [Philips]
- Reginald Goodall conducting the English National Opera Orchestra, 1975. Stereo sound. Sung in English, using Andrew Porter's translation. [Chandos]
- Pierre Boulez conducting the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, 1980-1981. Stereo sound. [Philips]
- Wolfgang Sawallisch conducting the Bayerische Staatsoper, 1989. Stereo sound [EMI Classics]
- James Levine conducting the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, 1990. Stereo sound. [Deutsche Grammophon]
The Solti recording was the first stereo studio recording of the complete cycle, and it remains popular. First-time buyers looking for a Ring recording are often recommended the Solti CDs, and in a poll on the BBC's long running radio programme "CD Review", this set was voted the greatest recording of the 20th century.
The Ring cycle is also available in a number of video or DVD presentations. These include:
- Pierre Boulez conducting the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, 1980-1981. [Philips]
- James Levine conducting the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, 1990. [Deutsche Grammophon]
Performances
The complete cycle is performed most years in the Bayreuth Festspielhaus: the first staging of a new production becomes a society event attended by many important and popular people like politicians, actors, musicians and sportsmen. Tickets are hard to get and are often reserved years in advance.
The Ring is a major undertaking for any opera company: staging four interlinked operas requires a huge commitment both artistically and financially. In most opera houses, production of a new Ring cycle will happen over a number of years, with one or two operas in the cycle being added each year. Bayreuth is unusual in that a new cycle is almost always created within a single year. The Ring cycle has been staged by opera companies in many different ways. Early productions often stayed close to Wagner's original Bayreuth staging. Following the closure of the Festspielhaus during the Second World War, the 1950s saw productions by Wagner's grandsons Wieland and Wolfgang Wagner which emphasised the human aspects of the drama in a more abstract setting. Famous modern interpretations include the centennial production of 1976 directed by Patrice Chéreau and conducted by Pierre Boulez. Set in the industrial revolution, it replaced the depths of the Rhine with a hydroelectric power dam and featured grimy sets populated by men and gods in business suits. Early performances were booed, but the production is now often regarded as revolutionary. Ring productions tend to fall into two camps: those which try to remain fairly close to Wagner's original stage design and direction, and those which seek to re-interpret the Ring for modern audiences, often inserting stage pictures and action which Wagner himself might not recognise. The production by Peter Hall, conducted by Georg Solti at Bayreuth in 1983 is an example of the former, while the production by Richard Jones at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in 1994 - 1996, conducted by Bernard Haitink, is an example of the latter.
Another interesting complete Ring cycle was begun in 2004, performed by the English National Opera at the Coliseum Theatre near London's Trafalgar Square. The production is notable for its use of contemporary minimalist sets and costumes. Many of the scenes look like rooms from Ikea and indeed the production is sponsored by the MFI furniture company.
Certain opera companies, such as the Seattle Opera, produce entirely new Ring cycles every 4 to 6 years. Seattle Opera's next cycle will be performed in August 2005.
The Canadian Opera Company is conducting its first complete Ring Cycle in 2006 upon the opening of the new Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts. This production is notable for the stage direction by prominent, worldwide known Canadian film directors Atom Egoyan and Franois Girard.da:Nibelungens Ring de:Der Ring des Nibelungen fr:L'Anneau du Nibelung ga:Ring des Nibelungen nl:Der Ring des Nibelungen ja:ニーベルングの指環 pt:Der Ring des Nibelungen sv:Nibelungens ring zh:尼伯龙根的指环