The Ring that rules them all
- Source: Global Times
- [09:42 August 16 2010]
- Comments
Richard Wagner. Photo: IC
The Ring Cycle is not a short story. At 15 hours or so it is the longest work in the general operatic repertoire. Wagner himself described it as a trilogy with a preliminary evening. Thus the works in order are Das Rheingold (The Rhine Gold), Die Walküre (The Valkyrie), Siegfried and Göterdämerung (The Twilight of the Gods).
He wrote the stories (dramas, as he called them) back to front. He completed a poem called Siegfried's Death in 1848 which is pretty much the outline for Gö-terdämerung. But he then realized this needed explaining and the characters had to be developed.
So he then wrote Young Siegfried which became Siegfried and later, to further explain the complex relationships and mythology, he wrote Die Walküre and then Das Rheingold. It took him 26 years to complete (though to be fair he did scribble another two major works Die Meistersingers von Nurnberg and Tristan und Isolde during this period).
It's not just long. It's loud in parts as well. Wagner threw out traditional musi-cal approaches and developed his own style for this, a style that later influenced the works of Mahler, Frank and Bruckner, among many others. Some consider him the founder of modern classical music.
The Ring Cycle requires a huge orches-tra with a large brass section. Wagner's original score asked for an orchestra with more than 100 musicians.
His music uses leitmotifs, themes that can represent a character, a feeling, a setting. And, strangely again for operas of the time, there are few scenes that include a chorus.
Staging the Ring Cycle is always a challenge and productions fall into two types - the traditional production that stick closely to Wagner's staging which he supervised for the opening performance in Bayreuth in 1876, or a radical new ap-proach, of which there have been many.
Guns and light sabers
The Ring Cycle has seen the characters in and out of uniform, it has seen topless valkyries, puppets, guns and light sabers. It has been performed in the open and in small auditoriums in America and Europe. It has never been without critics or fans and has long been a source of controversy.
When Hitler espoused the works, the Ring Cycle was given another twist. It be-came associated with Nazi Germany and anti-semitism. All of which was clouded because Wagner himself once wrote an essay accusing Jews of being a harmful element in German culture.
But his works remain international and his genius influence undeniable. And there was a human being after all behind that grandiose exterior, behind the writer of epics and the composer of grandeur. He once advised a young conductor: "Never look at the trombones, it only encourages them
