Siegfried, the powerful, free-spirited hero was also a type of secret projection figure for Wagner. Excited by his own creation, he wrote to Ludwig II: “Siegfried is divine. It is my greatest work!” Only Siegfried’s new world order could finally free Wotan from his contractual shackles and power struggles; the fact that Siegfried became a prototype of the “master race” in the 20th century, is a chapter which cannot be separated from the current view of the opera. At the same time, the third instalment of the Ring cycle contains one of the greatest love stories and, perhaps, Siegfried’s hardest test – though no contest with the “easy” acquisition of the Rheingold treasure – his encounter with Wotan’s Valkyrie daughter Brünnhilde. Fearlessly passing through the ring of fire in which Wotan has imprisoned his daughter in an eternal, magical sleep, he experiences fear for the first time at the sight of the awakening Brünnhilde. The pair become inflamed with passionate love for one another. To Wagner, the revolution which Siegfried embodied and which finally put an end to the antiquated world order, was both seminal and productive: “Siegfried innocently took on the guilt of the gods. He suffered for their injustices through his stubbornness and independence.”
Das Rheingold
First performance: 1869 in Munich
Die Walküre
First performance: 1870 in Munich
Siegfried
First performance: 1876 in Munich
Götterdämmerung
First performance: 1876 in Bayreuth
Richard Wagner (1813 – 1883)
Libretto: by the composer
The 2017 International May Festival offers two complete cycles of Wagner’s “Ring”, each spread over the course of six days. On the “rest days” during the first cycle, we offer the
Wagner Gala Concert, a lecture matinee and a reading from Thomas Mann’s “
Wälsungenblut”, while the second cycle offers the operas “
Le nozze di Figaro” and “
Die Zauberflöte”.
“The incomparable thing about myth,” wrote Wagner in 1851, “is that it is true for all time.” His “Ring” is a drama about the genesis and demise of a mythical world which is, despite everything, more current than ever before. With human co-existence at its core, Wagner’s mammoth four-part work is filled with symbols such as ring, speer, gold, helmet and sword, as well as countless musically and textually interwoven elements. Figures, ideas, thoughts, feelings and naturalistic references blend with words and music to form images in which endless associative properties are hidden and expressed. In the end, what ultimately remains after all the violence and death, is hope for a new beginning – an unredeemed wish not only for the 19th, but also for the 20th and 21st centuries.