The Faber Pocket Guide to Opera (19 page)

Brangäne, Melot and King Marke follow in Isolde’s wake.
Kurwenal kills Melot, and then dies himself in the fray.
Marke had nobly decided to yield Isolde to Tristan, but it is all too late – Isolde, in a trance, rejoices that she and Tristan will now be mystically united in death.

What to listen for

The whole opera seems to germinate out of the hauntingly bittersweet opening phrase of the Prelude – music which seems to hover outside any recognizable key, pulling itself upwards as if to describe the desperate yearnings of Tristan and Isolde.
Act I belongs to Isolde, who immediately launches into a tirade of frustrated rage and later faces some killing fortissimo top Bs and Cs at the climax of the story she tells Brangäne of Morold and ‘Tantris’.
The temptation for any soprano is to get round the difficult notes and make an effect by shrieking – a tactic which will probably leave her no voice for the warmer and more lyrical music of the second and third acts.

Act II unites Tristan with Isolde in a half-hour duet (its first, frenzied section is sometimes cut) in which they move ever closer together, interrupted only by Brangäne’s warning
(a particularly beautiful melodic episode, which tests any mezzo-soprano’s power to sustain a steady line) and followed by Marke’s long slow bass monologue of rueful recrimination.
Act III is dominated by Tristan’s ravings as he waits for the shepherd’s piping (on a cor anglais) which heralds Isolde’s arrival.
No tenor has ever communicated Tristan’s mixture of sexual frustration, physical agony and hysterical impatience with more passion than Jon Vickers.
But it was cruel of Wagner to expect an ordinary mortal tenor to have the vocal resources for these scenes at this late stage of a long evening.

The opera ends with Isolde’s ‘Liebestod’ or love death – a nirvana in which all the frenzy of the opera reaches its consummation, all passion spent.

The opera is based on a web of melodic themes, embedded in harmonies so dense and evanescent that it is often impossible to identify the music’s key.
This is music which moves in a constant state of tension – never arriving at any real destination until the Liebestod.

In performance

The most influential modern interpretation is that of Wieland Wagner, the composer’s grandson.
In 1952, his production at Bayreuth swept away all the trappings of Victorian symbolism and put the opera for the first time into a completely abstract setting which specified neither time nor place and focused attention entirely on the principal characters, often spotlighting them on a virtually bare stage – creating an impression on the vast Bayreuth stage of existential loneliness.

Ever since, the opera has usually been staged with varying degrees of minimalism – the much-admired 1993 Bayreuth production by Heiner Müller was described by one critic as taking place in ‘an emotional compression chamber’.
An interesting exception is David Alden’s arresting production for ENO, set in what appears to be the backstage area of a bombed-out theatre.

Recordings

CD: Kirsten Flagstad (Isolde); Wilhelm Furtwängler (cond.).
EMI 7 47322 8

Birgit Nilsson (Isolde); Karl Böhm (cond.).
Philips 449 772 2

Der Ring des Nibelungen
(
The Ring of the Nibelung)

Das
Rheingold,
one act;
Die
Walküre,
three acts;
Siegfried,
three acts;
Götterdämmerung,
three acts. First performed Bayreuth, 1876. Libretto by the composer

Broadly speaking, Wagner wrote the libretto for the
Ring
backwards, between 1848 and 1852.
He then composed the music for
Das
Rheingold
in 1853–4;
Die
Walküre,
1854–6; Acts 1 and II of
Siegfried,
1856–7, Act III, 1869; and
Götterdämmerung,
1869–72.
In all, the cycle gestated over a quarter of a century, and Wagner then faced four more years of struggle in his campaign to build a theatre at Bayreuth capable of rehearsing and staging the four operas consecutively.

In all, the
Ring
contains over fourteen hours of music.
It is an immense sprawling epic, loosely drawn from various German mythical sources (notably the medieval epic poem the
Nibelungenlied
), influenced in form and shape by Greek tragedy and reflecting the thought of various nineteenth-century philosophers (Schopenhauer, Hegel, Feuerbach, Proudhon) in its themes: the redemptive power of love, the moral poison of the struggle for political and material supremacy, the sterility of bourgeois marriage, the growth of individual self-awareness.
But the
Ring
is also a wonderfully theatrical fairy-tale, rich in comedy, spectacle and adventure, as well as the natural beauty of forest and river.

Plot

Das
Rheingold

Three Rhinemaidens guard a magical lump of gold lying at the bottom of their river.
They taunt the dwarf Alberich, telling him that whoever forges the Rhinegold into a Ring will gain power over all the world, if he also renounces love.
Furious at the Rhinemaidens’ emptily provocative flirtation, Alberich steals the gold and renounces love.

Wotan is currently king of the gods.
High in the mountains, he and his strait-laced wife Fricka admire from afar the exterior of their new palace, Valhalla.
It has just been built by the giants Fasolt and Fafner, who are now asking for the agreed payment – Freia, the beautiful Goddess of Youth.
Wotan is reluctant to hand her over, and is advised by the cunning Loge, God of Fire, to steal the Rhinegold from Alberich instead.
The giants agree to accept the gold in lieu, but hold Freia hostage meanwhile.
In her absence, the gods age and wither.

Wotan and Loge descend into the Nibelheim, where Alberich, empowered by the Ring, tyrannizes slaves who mine him massive wealth.
Wotan and Loge encourage Alberich to show off the power of the Tarnhelm, a helmet made from the Rhinegold which can transform the wearer into any shape he chooses.
When Alberich changes himself into a toad, Wotan and Loge find it easy to seize both the Ring and the Tarnhelm, as well as the remainder of the Rhinegold.
Alberich, reverted to his natural form, curses the Ring and all who own it.

Back in Valhalla, Wotan prepares to hand the gold over to Fasolt and Fafner, but attempts to keep the Ring back for himself – until the all-knowing earth-goddess Erda, whose divinity is more ancient than that of the current generation of gods, warns Wotan of the dangers.
So the Ring is handed over to the giants, and at once Alberich’s curse takes effect – Fafner kills Fasolt and makes off with the Ring, the Tarnhelm and the Rhinegold.
Freia is released and the gods are rejuvenated.
As they prepare to cross over the rainbow bridge and
take up residence in magnificent Valhalla, Loge cynically comments from the sidelines that this collection of gods is dishonoured and that their downfall cannot be far away.

Die
Walküre

Siegmund is one of several mortal children that Wotan has illegitimately fathered in his effort to breed mortal heroes who can break Alberich’s curse on the Ring.
He is driven by a storm to seek shelter in a forest hut, where he is welcomed to the hearth by Sieglinde, the sad and lonely wife of Hunding.

Although they have never met before, Siegmund and Sieglinde feel a mysterious bond, and when Hunding returns he is disturbed by the attraction between them, as well as their physical resemblance.
Siegmund tells his story.
He is a loner and a fugitive, whose mother was murdered and whose twin sister was abducted.
Involved in a fight trying to save a woman, he killed some men.
Hunding realizes that Siegmund’s victims were his kinsmen and that he bears Siegmund a grudge.
The laws of hospitality oblige him to offer Siegmund a night’s shelter, but at dawn he will be obliged to challenge Siegmund to a duel.

Sieglinde drugs Hunding’s drink.
Returning to Siegmund in the middle of the night, she tells Siegmund how a strange man (unknown to her, the disguised Wotan) appeared at her wedding and thrust a sword into the tree-trunk that runs through the hut, declaring that only a hero would be able to extract it.
Siegmund is entranced by her tale.
The doors of the hut fly open, revealing a moonlit spring landscape which they greet rapturously.
Siegmund pulls the sword, which he christens ‘Nothung’, from the tree, and Sieglinde ecstatically realizes that Siegmund is her long-lost twin-brother – a relationship which does not inhibit their sexual passion.
As Hunding sleeps on, they run away into the forest.

Wotan orders Brünnhilde – favourite of his daughters by Erda, together known as the Valkyries, Amazonian virgins who gather up the bodies of slaughtered warriors and carry them on horseback to Valhalla – to defend Siegmund, who is
being pursued by Hunding.
But Wotan’s wife Fricka, guardian of the sanctity of marriage, violently disapproves of incest and, after her tirade against immorality, Wotan is forced to withdraw his support of Siegmund, even though his heart cries out against the decision.
He tells Brünnhilde the story of the Ring and the curse that lies on it, explaining that only a hero, acting of his own free will, can rescue the Ring from the clutches of Fafner and redeem the curse – even if that also means the end of the gods in Valhalla.

When Brünnhilde meets Siegmund, she is forced to warn him of his impending death.
Yet she is filled with a new compassion when she observes his devotion to Sieglinde and their exhausted state.
She decides to disobey her father’s command and shield Siegmund in his duel with Hunding.
Wotan, however, is obliged to shield Hunding, and Siegmund is struck dead.
Brünnhilde flees with Sieglinde.

The Valkyries ride back to their lair, carrying the latest crop of fallen warriors.
Brünnhilde follows, bearing not a soldier, but Sieglinde.
She begs her sisters to protect her from Wotan’s wrath, but they refuse.
Brünnhilde hails the baby that stirs in Sieglinde’s womb as the hero Siegfried and tells her that one day he will reforge the magic sword Nothung, shattered in the duel with Hunding.
Heartened, Sieglinde escapes into the forest, carrying the remnants of Nothung.