Das Rheingold (The Rhinegold)

99 Pages·2011·18.272 MB·English

by  Richard Wagner

Opera Guides
Alberich and the three Rhinemaidens at Covent Garden in 1964 (photo: Donald Southern)
Foreword
To 'wallow in the highlights' is one way of hearing Wagner; but a
greater understanding and appreciation of the form, structure and
harmony of the music, as well as a true realisation of the intimate and
subtle relation between music and text, can be obtained by a reading of
these Guides.
Reginald Goodall November 20, 1985
Das Rheingold
(The Rhinegold)
Richard Wagner
Opera Guides
Series Editor
Nicholas John
OP
OVERTURE
Overture Publishing
an imprint of
oneworld classics
London House
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Richmond
Surrey TW9 2LL
United Kingdom
This Opera Guide first published by John Calder (Publishers) Ltd in 1985
This new edition of Das Rheingold Opera Guide first published by Overture
Publishing, an imprint of Oneworld Classics Ltd, in 2011
Articles © the authors
© Oneworld Classics Ltd, 2011
English translation of the Das Rheingold libretto © Andrew Porter, 1985
isbn: 978-0-7145-4436-6
All the pictures in this volume are reprinted with permission or presumed to be in the public
domain. Every effort has been made to ascertain and acknowledge their copyright status,
but should there have been any unwitting oversight on our part, we would be happy to
rectify the error in subsequent printings.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced
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Printed in the United Kingdom
Contents
List of Illustrations vi
The Beginning of 'The Ring' John Death ridge 7
'The Rhinegold' - The Mmlic Rog~;,>r North 15
Language and Sources of 'The Ring' Stewart Spencer 31
Thematic Guide Lionel Friend 39
'Das Rheingold' poem by R£chard Wagner
'The Rhinegold' English translation by Andrew Porter 43
Scene One 45
Scene Two 54
Scene Three 68
Scene Four 77
Contributors 92
Discography Cathy Peterson 94
Bibliography 96
List of Illustrations
Cover design: Anita Boyd
Frontispiece: Alberich and the Rhinemaidens, Covent Garden, 1964 (photo: Donald
Southern)
Friedrichs, Breuer, Elmblad, Weed and Wachter, Bayreuth, 1897 (Royal
Opera House Archives)
p. 12 Eva Turner as Frda in 1924 (Royal Opera House Archives)
p. 13 Leif Roar (Wotan) and Wolf Hirte (Alberich), Munich, 1975 (photo:
Sabine Toepfter)
p. 14 A scene from Tony Palmer's film Wagner (1982) and a contemporary
drawing.
The Rhinemaidens at Bayreuth, 1984 (photo: Fcstspielleitung Bayreuth)
Alberich aud the Rhinemaidens at Bayreuth, 1980 (photo: Fests
pielleitung Bayreuth)
p. 19 James Morris (Wotan), San Francisco, 1985 (photo: William Acheson)
p. 20 Robert Tear (Loge) and Yv:moe Minton (Fricka), Covent Garden, 1980
(photo: Reg Wilson)
p. 21 George Shirley (Loge) and Donald Mcintyre (Wotan) at Covent Garden
(photo: Donald Southern)
p. 23 The journey down to Nibdheim at the Deu<sche Opcr, Berlin, 1984
(photo: Knmichphoto)
p. 24 Walter Berry(Aiberich), San Francisco, 1985 William Acheson)
p. 25 Malcolm Rivers (Alberich), Seattle Opera Festival, 197 5
p. 27 Two scenes from the ENO production (photos: Anthony Crickmay;
Mike Humphrey)
p. 29 Scene Four in Leipzig, 1973 (photo: Helge Walmiiller)
p. 30 The final moments at Bayreuth, 1984 (photo: Festspidldtung Bayreuth)
p. 32 K.atherine Pring (Frkka) and Raimund Herincx at ENO (photo:
John Garner)
p. 32 Donald Mcintyre (Wotan), Yvonne Mimon (Fricka) and Joan Carlyle
(Freia) at Covent Garden (photo: Donald Southern)
p. 34 \\(Iotan leads the gods up to Valhalla at WNO (photo: Catherine
Ashmore)
p. 37 Karl Christian Kohn (Fafner), Julia Varady (Freia) and Franz Crass
(Fasolt), Munich, 1975 (photo: Sabine Toepffer)
p. 44 The final scene of Joachim Herz's 1973 Leipzig production (photo:
Helga Walmiiller)
p. 65 Philip Jo ll (Wotan), Nigel Douglas (Loge) and Roderick Earle ( F afi1er) at
WNO (phot<J: Zoe Dominic)
p. 93 The entrance of the gods into Valhalla, San Francisco, 1985 (photo:
William Acheson)
Picture research: Henrietta Bredin
The of 'The Ring
Begin:~.'li.ngs
Deathridge
The size greatness will always be disputed. But no one can deny
that he wrote, at least in terms of length, the biggest work in the history of
Western music: The RingL~(the He also left what may be the largest
number of sketches and autographs for any single work of art Almost 800
manuscript oftext and 3,750 of music include drafts of two preliminary
essays, three prose sketches,. four detailed prose drafts, twelve verse
drafts, six full-length drafts, three first drafts of the full score
Valkyrie, Acts One and Two), and fi)ur autograph scores,
were in the possession of Adolf Hitler
at the end the Second World 'War and are now lost.
Yet despite :.his wealth of documl':niation the story ofhow Wagner began to
vvrite The Ring is still unclear. Wagner himself is surprisingly reticent about
it. There is no equivalent of the stormy sea voyage via Norway to London in
1839 that. inspired The Dutchman or the sight of the historic Wartburg
in Thuringia on the to Germany from Paris in 1842 that is supposed
to have stimulated of Tannhiiuser. Nor do the literary
coJmj:)leJnents of these autobiographical images have any parallel in
the of The Ring. If Heinrich Heine's version of the Dutchman story
gave Wagner the idea ofredemption as an effective resol.ution of tragic conflict
and C.T.L Lucas's paper on the Wartburg song contest opened a 'new world'
of operatic possibilities taken fi·om the German Middle Ages, no such central
significance is attached to any of the Ring sources. Wagner speaks of a plan
contemplated 'with reserve'. He says nothing about exactly when, why, or
how he came to conceive the project before 1848. All he is prepared to reveal is
that by 1848, when he first wrote down his ideas for The Ring, he had already
been an based on the Siegfried legend 'for quite a long time'.
Wagner's virtual abotn the beginnings of The Ring is perhaps both
shyness and a way of heightening his own claim to originality by soft
pedalling the popularity of the subject in Germany at the time. Iffew except
Wagner had seen operatic possibilities in the Dutchman or Tannhauser
material, many were aware of the theatrical potential of the Nibelungen myth
and remained eager to adapt it even when it was widely known that Wagner
would eventually produce a version that would count as his summum opus.
Raupach wrote a play Der Nibe.!ungenhort based on the myth ( 171e Nibelungs'
Hoard) as early as 1828 and published it in 1834. According to Ernest
Newman, Mendelssohn was inspired by his sister Fanny with enthusiasm for
a Nibelungen opera in 1&40, but soon abandoned the idea. Henrich Dorn's
five-act opera Die Nibelungen (The Nibelungs) was produced by Liszt in
Weimar in 1854 with Wagner's niece Johanna in the role ofBrunnhilde- an
event that must have ta011ished Liszt's early support of the Ring project in
Wagner's especially as Dorn was an old rival. Wagner's negative
remarks in autobiography about the Austrian dramatist Friedrich Hebbel,
too, are not unconnected with feelings of rivalry with the latter's successful
Nibdungen plays written in the late 1850s.
As early ;;.s 1844 the phi.losophcr Friedrich Theodor Vischer published an
influentiai essay, .zu emer Oper (Suggestion for an Opera)
7
suggesting the Nibelungen as the subject of a new kind of dramatic work he
called a 'grand heroic opera'. Vischer's ideas were replete with criticisms of
Romanticism and politically suggestive phrases about the Vaterland and the
innate Germanness of the Nibelungen heroes, so it is hardly surprising that
Wagner is supposed to have been 'almost certainly' (Ernest Newman)
acquainted with them. Attempts have also been made to prove that he knew
Vischer's disciple Louise Otto and her libretto Die Nibelungen - a 'grand
heroic opera' in five acts written in 1846 and published in 1852 when Robert
Schumann showed some interest in setting it. Yet there is no concrete
evidence that Wagner knew the work ofe ither Vischer or Otto. Ifhe did know
about their proposed Nibelungen operas, any fears he may have had about the
originality of his own project were unfounded. Vischer did not accept that a
Nibelungen opera could be written by a composer with symphonic ambitions
- an opinion that would hardly have endeared him to Wagner in the 1840s
when the idea of symphonic opera was already beginning to take hold in a
work like Lohengrin. And Wagner's combination ofG erman and Scandinavian
sources in The Ring alone developed the material far beyond what Vischer
and Otto had managed to do with the German epic poem Das Nibelungenlied,
the only source they seriously considered. Wagner's assertion in a letter to
Liszt (November 20, 1851) was fully justified: when the first plan for The Ring
was written down in 1848, he had regarded it from that moment on as his own
'poetic property'.
* * *
The earliest evidence ofWagner's intention of turning the Nibelungen myth
into an opera does not originate with Wagner himselfbut with another source.
On April 1, 1848, Eduard Devrient, an actor and director at the Dresden
Court Theatre where Wagner was employed in the 1840s as Royal
Kapellmeister, wrote in his diary: 'He [Wagner] tells me about a new plan for
an opera based on the Siegfried legend.' Since the diaries show that Devrient
and Wagner met regularly to discuss art and politics, the description of the
plan as 'new' suggests that Wagner had developed it only shortly before the
meeting on April1 took place. According to his autobiographical writings, he
had the idea directly after he had attempted to write Friedrich I, a spoken
drama on the subject of Friedrich Barbarossa. This is confirmed by Cosima
Wagner's diaries in which Wagner is quoted as saying(November 12, 1871): 'I
am glad that I have an eye for this connection b.!tween legend and history ...
the compilation of the Nibelung Saga ... began with Friedrich I.'
In describing the gestation of The Ring in the months leading up to the
Dresden Revolution of May 1849 Wagner presents his interest in history and
myth as a fundamental aesthetic and intellectual confrontation. A variety of
sources, however, show that the final choice of myth as the true source of the
new revolutionary opera was not quite as straightforward as Wagner later
claimed. There is no doubt that he wrote down a prose draft embracing the
substance of the entire Ring from the theft of the Rhinegold and the building
ofValhalla to the deaths ofSiegfried and Brunnhilde. The draft was called Die
Nibelungensage (Mythus) and was completed on October 4, 1848. From this
condensed presentation Wagner crystallised the plot of Siegfried's Death
tJater entitled Twilight of the Gods), completing the first verse libretto by
November 28, 1848. But the clean autobiographical image of a final
confrontation with German political history in the shape of Friedrich
Barbarossa leading inexorably to the 'purely human' world of myth in
8
Death fi·om which never looked back is ""'·"!-'""'""'"
among other things, an entry in diaries <"'''""I"
Hl49, i.e. almost three months
wants to turn a
to account and most biographers who have repeated it,
he seems to have interest in '17le immediately before and after the
Dresden Revolution. Besides Fr·iedrich I, he wrote extensive drafts for a
number of other theatrical projects, ,,_,,w·~w•s
and lf'ieland dcr Schmied. He
Achilles. i\nd in the years after
Switzerland he spent. much time
and several theoretical treatises.
Dearh
find time to
and
nrcr~nj~,, FV<'~Vthl
be sure of an excellent
Then I would invite everyone
sure that the auditorium is filled >and
nPrtr. .• nn'H'1C'I>~ in a week - the
theatre be pulled down and the
A few months after to
in a letter dated
ofthenew
again like ""·".r'""'ri
some sketches for it survive. In another letter to Uhlig between
October 6 and 1 announced this time that he had 'big ideas'
about Siegfried: 't.hree dramas with an introduction in three acts'. He then
wrote prose sketches for Der Raub (The
Rhinegofd) and und Bestrafung
and Sieg!inde: the Punishment and completed the ,.,_,,,_,,u~
what becan1e The and The in the following year. Strictly
9