Wagner's "Ring' cycle (Part 6: "Götterdämmerung&apos

Sixth of a series of articles about Wagner's Ring cycle.

The next time I attend Wagner's Ring, I'd like to see Siegfried and Götterdämmerung on the same day. Better yet, I'd like to see them back-to-back: Siegfried in the afternoon and Götterdämmerung following with minimal pause.

Fueling my desire is the fact that Götterdämmerung's opening scene exerts greatest impact when you see it in contrast to the preceding opera's happy finale. Götterdämmerung, The Twilight of the Gods, begins with three women talking about the past and, when they turn to speak of the future, everything breaks off. These are the Norns, who supposedly know everything about past and future. They're weaving the long rope of destiny and then, abruptly, it snaps. The scene goes dark, and we're plunged into despair that the end of their world is imminent.

Taken without preparation, such an opening seems unexciting. I'm reminded a bit of how Rodgers & Hammerstein opened their Oklahoma! not with a snappy number but with one lady alone on stage, churning butter. And also by Shakespeare's three witches who open Macbeth by somberly contemplating the future.

Meaning of the eye patch

The Norns' scene provides some helpful background to the story we've been watching for more than ten hours. They sing about how Wotan, early in his career, cut a branch off the World Ash Tree, source of all wisdom, and fashioned it into his spear, at the same time drinking from a spring of knowledge near the tree's roots. In payment for this wisdom he gave up something precious: one of his eyes, which is why he wears a patch. We've seen it through the opera, but only now do we learn its significance.

The Norns also inform us that the ash tree has died and Wotan is cutting its branches into firewood and stacking them. He's resigned to the death of the gods and intends to burn his palace to the ground.

Now the story returns to the narrative of Siegfried and Brünnhilde. Here the music for the older Siegfried has become more adult, in solid two-four time rather than the youthful six-eight of the previous opera, and a minor harmony indicates coming sorrow.

The theme of the mature Brünnhilde is beautiful and appropriately clinging. She sends Siegfried off to new adventures, asking him to keep their love in mind as the orchestra gives us wonderful traveling music, the famous "Rhine Journey." In this opera, written after a 17-year break in which Wagner composed Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger, his orchestral music is even more complex and symphonic than before.

Siegfried's new friends

Siegfried discovers a population of Gibichungs living near the Rhine. We know little about the Gibichungs and have scant reason to care, except that Siegfried's interaction with them will lead to his death. Siegfried meets Gunther, the king of the Gibichungs, and his half-brother, Hagen, who was fathered by Alberich, the villain of the Ring.

Why doesn't Siegfried just say hello and goodbye to these guys and continue on his way? Why is Siegfried so eager to bond with them? Why does he want to be their "blood-brother"? I can only speculate that Siegfried, who is Wotan's grandson, feels connected because he intuits that Alberich and Wotan are two sides of one being, mirror images to each other.

Wotan refers to this dichotomy in Siegfried when he refers to himself as Licht Alberich ("Light Alberich"), who gains power by legal contracts, in contrast to Schwarz Alberich ("Dark Alberich") who attains power through force. Alberich refuses to accept his label as the sole villain, telling Wotan: "You have caused distress to the world through your guile... you treacherous trickster."

Each villain has enabled the other. Alberich's theft of the gold from the Rhine (in Das Rheingold) gave Wotan the means to pay for the construction of Valhalla. Both of them were dissatisfied with the world; witness Wotan's need to construct a Valhalla. When my wife and I visited King Ludwig's castle, Neuschwanstein, in Bavaria, we saw it as that monarch's Valhalla. Ludwig, you will recall, adored Wagner's music, and his ornate castle contains murals and sculpture of Wagnerian opera scenes. (Pre-Ring, of course. Ludwig was declared insane and died mysteriously before Wagner completed the cycle.)

The magic potion schtick

Getting back to Act I of Götterdämmerung, Siegfried accepts a drink that makes him forget about Brünnhilde. He falls in love with Gunther's sister, Gutrune, and, when he's told that Gutrune can't marry until after her brother has, Siegfried promises to help Gunther win Brünnhilde for his bride. We must contrast this device with what we see in Tristan, where a magic potion seems to cause Tristan and Isolde to fall in love with each other. But in that case a palpable chemistry existed between Tristan and Isolde before they shared a drink, so we're not required to believe that magic alone propels the plot.

Around the same time that Wagner wrote Götterdämmerung, W.S. Gilbert wrote a libretto about a magic lozenge that would change his characters and the plot of a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. Arthur Sullivan, his partner, rejected the idea as artificial and lacking in "human interest and probability." Gilbert's persistence in pushing this device contributed to the break-up of that theatrical team.

Waiting for the world's end

Now comes a quiet scene of drama. Brünnhilde, alone on a rocky plateau, is visited by her Valkyrie sister Waltraute. Brünnhilde hopes that her sister has brought news that her father, Wotan, has forgiven her for defying him. Not so.

"Listen carefully," Waltraute says, as she relates that the curse is affecting Wotan to the point where he now sits silently with the other gods in their castle, awaiting the end of the world. Wotan, the controlling figure of the early parts of the Ring, has become an aging, disillusioned pessimist. This evolution mirrors that of Wagner himself, who conceived Götterdämmerung as a revolutionary 35-year-old but didn"'t finish composing it until he was 61.

Waltraute begs Brünnhilde to return the ring to the Rhine maidens in order to lift the curse. But Brünnhilde refuses to relinquish Siegfried's token of love, and Waltraute rides away in despair. The duet contrasts Waltraute's dark mezzo with Brünnhilde's higher voice.

Siegfried arrives, disguised as Gunther, and claims Brünnhilde as his wife. Brünnhilde resists, but Siegfried overpowers her, snatching the ring from her hand and placing it on his own at the end of Act I.

Hitler's inspiration

Act II contains the only use of chorus in the entire Ring cycle. The vassals of King Gunther sing: "Waffen! Waffen! Waffen durchs Land! Gute Waffen! Starke Waffen! Scharf zum Streit." ("Weapons! weapons! Take up your weapons! Good weapons! Strong weapons! Sharpened for battle.")

Waffen— the name of Hitler's elite SS corps— inevitably makes us uncomfortable. We must remind ourselves that Wagner didn't invent the Nazis, even if some of his writings inspired them.

In this act, Brünnhilde discovers that Siegfried has been unfaithful to her, and she's furious that "he forced me" to submit. Brünnhilde and the Gibichung brothers decide that the punishment for Siegfried must be his death, and the vengeful Brünnhilde reveals to Hagen the hero's one vulnerable spot, which is his back. My wife says this is a weak spot in the Ring, resembling bad TV drama, and I regret that it was a potion that drove Siegfried to his doom rather than something in his character or willful action on his part.

Back to the future

The last act finds the Rhine maidens still bewailing the loss of their gold while Siegfried ignores them. Hagen stabs Siegfried to death, and his body is borne away, to magnificent funeral music. Back at the hall of the Gibichungs, Hagen admits his trickery and kills his own brother. Brünnhilde orders a funeral pyre for Siegfried, places the ring on her finger and joyfully rushes into the flames. She sings that Siegfried was innocent and "everything is now clear to me... The fire that consumes me shall cleanse the ring from the curse. You in the water, wash it away." Brünnhilde, like Isolde, wants to be one with her loved one in the intensity of love.

As the river overflows its banks and the Gibichung hall is consumed, Hagen sees the gold in the possession of the maidens and plunges into the water after them. They encircle him with their arms and draw him down to his death. Valhalla is seen in the distance, in flames.

Full circle, at last

The orchestra reprises some of the best music from the cycle, reminding us of the Magic Fire, the Ride of the Valkyries, Siegfried, Twilight, Redemption, Brünnhilde's love and Valhalla. Wagner pumps up the pomp associated with the Valhalla music into a blazing grandiosity, indicating the hollow glory of Wotan's ambitions. Then the music of the Rhine maidens returns, bringing us full circle to the place where the Ring began.

But not quite. The orchestra plays a full D-flat major chord, a step below the E-flat of the Rheingold prelude, reminding us of Nietzsche's idea that although patterns will recur, we never arrive back at precisely the same place.

These gods have been destroyed, and suppositions abound about what this signifies. The death of religion? The triumph of science, or of nature? Dämmerung could also mean dawn, since the term is used for both the rising and setting of the sun. Wagner's stage direction is: "Among the ruins of the collapsed hall, men and women stand spellbound, looking up at the growing light in the sky." â—†"¨



Sixth in a series of articles about Wagner's Ring cycle. "¨To read the series from the beginning, click here.