Der Ring des Nibelungen (final thoughts)

The Ring of the Nibelung is a lot of opera; there's no denying that. Opera isn't like going to the movies, even if they are a similar form of entertainment, and they are a similar form of entertainment. However, it does require quite a bit more concentration to take in something that's in a different language. It can be challenging, especially with something this long.

However, I also think it's worth it. Of course, that's from the guy who will slog through books and movies that I know I'm not going to like just so that I will have the context of it. Or to prove that it's bad. Or whatever. You can take what I say about opera, then, with whatever kind of salt you need to use. But I do like opera, both in theory and in experience. I think it should be a more widespread form of entertainment, and it would be if it could break its bonds of tradition that old, white people have it chained to. Old white people like that opera is seen as some kind of elitist entertainment because it makes them feel superior to other people who don't see opera. But that's a different conversation.

The Ring is a significant achievement in opera-viewing. I didn't really appreciate the extent of that achievement until seeing it. I think it says something that I would be more than willing to see it again. In fact, I want to see it again. It's a complex story, and I think it needs another viewing.

Having said that, I am no "Wagnerian." I didn't find the opera to be any kind of "religious experience," as some people describe it. I've actually been having a hard time coming to terms with that viewpoint, in fact, but, then, some people view Game of Thrones that way and, by comparison, Thrones is so far inferior it's difficult to even call it a work of art.

Which is not to say that The Ring doesn't have its flaws. It actually has what I would consider some pretty significant flaws, the central one being the Ring itself. For a Ring of absolute power, it seems to do very little and fails to protect its wearer at every juncture during the opera. Of course, it's no different than the way magic is used by most authors: It only works when the author wants it to and, for whatever reason, fails the user at plot-opportune moments. So this isn't a just a problem I have with Wagner; it's a problem I tend to have with authors in general, especially when they don't follow the rules they themselves have set up for their work.

Based on the scant knowledge I have of Wagner, I'm going to say that the Ring is a metaphor for technology and that he represents himself within the opera through the character of Wotan. Wagner was not a fan of industrialization and viewed it as somewhat of a curse upon the world, the same way Wotan speaks of the Ring once he has resisted his own temptation to wield its power to control the world (which I found puzzling because Wotan was already in charge of the world, so to speak, so it seemed a bit odd to me that he would, then, feel like he needed the Ring to be in charge of it).

Wotan is a seeker of knowledge and spends lifetimes searching out all the secrets and hidden places of the world. And hatching schemes. Through the first part of the Cycle, Wotan's efforts are going toward building up Valhalla and, by extension, the world. It's his desire to bring into being a champion, a hero, who can wield the Ring and not be corrupted by it. Then, suddenly, at the beginning of Twilight of the Gods, we find that Wotan has retreated into Valhalla and locked all of the gods in with him and is waiting to burn it all down using the wood of what is the equivalent of the World Tree. There will be no escaping for the gods.

Maybe it's the events in The Valkyrie that push him in that direction. It's hard to say because he's still around meddling during the events in Siegfried, but his goals may have already shifted at that point. At any rate, I find the idea of the only way to save the world is to destroy it to be chilling, especially in our current political climate in which so many people actually believe that. The fanatical religious Right, as a group, believe in the apocalypse as a form of salvation and do more and more to usher in a destroyed world, which seems to have been Wagner's view based on the ending of The Ring.

Needless to say, I don't really understand this idea of destroying something in order to save it, but I suppose it is very Biblical. The Flood immediately comes to mind. And Sodom and Gomorrah. It's even a view echoed by the character Delores in Westworld. But I just don't think it's okay to make that decision for someone else. Why should you get to impose your view of whether something is broken or not onto me. Well, you shouldn't.

The question of burning the world down to purify it is particularly relevant today. Much to my horror. It's a little weird to experience that same kind of thought in a piece of work dating back 150 years. It's more than a little weird to find how close we are, right now, to fulfilling Wagner's vision.

Gotterdammerung (an opera review post)

My wife went to the opera, and all I got was this t-shirt...
Okay, well, that's not precisely true since I also went to the opera. In fact, I'm the one who wanted to go to this... exercise in endurance. Seriously, why does your butt hurt from sitting? Isn't that what it's made for?
Okay, maybe not.

But I digress...

For an opera named Twilight of the Gods, there are not a lot of gods in this one. In fact, an appearance by one lone Valkyrie is about as close to a god as we get, and the Valkyries, though immortal (other than Brunnhilde, who is no longer a Valkyrie), are not quite gods. It was kind of weird to not have Wotan show up at all, but he's gone and locked himself up inside of Valhalla -- along with all of the other gods -- and is waiting to burn it all down. Yeah, I'm not going to try to explain how we got to that point; you can go read a plot synopsis if you want to.

I think I should make it clear that Siegfried is an asshole. Sure, he's the greatest hero in the world, but that doesn't make it okay to be a blatant, flaming asshole. Which he is. Seriously. His go-to response to any and every situation, including just meeting someone, is, "Hey, I'm going to fight you!" Occasionally, he'd throw in, "...or we can be friends," but that isn't the norm.

And he's an abuser of women. Not like he beat them up or anything, but he definitely had that "I'm famous, so I can grab 'em by the pussy" attitude. At one point, the Rhinemaidens are trying to warn him that he needs to give up the Ring or he's going to be dead before the end of the day, and his response is, "I'll tell you what: Why don't all three of you have sex with me, then we can talk about the Ring." Of course, when they reject him, his response to that is, "Well, I'm faithful to my wife, anyway." His wife who is not Brunnhilde, because -- remember last post when I said he was stupid? -- he got tricked into drinking a potion that made him forget all about Brunnhilde, so he married someone else, a woman named Gutrune.

Toss into this mix Hagen. Hagen is the son of Alberich via the rape of Gutrune's mother and merely a tool of Alberich to try to reclaim the Ring. Because, evidently, that's the primary purpose of children: to be the tools by which you accomplish your own goals. At least that's what we can learn from Alberich, Mime, and Wotan. Oh, also, Hagen has a thing for his half-sister and keeps trying to put the moves on her.

It's all a very sordid affair and that's before Brunnhilde gets involved.

All of that to say that I didn't feel bad at all for Siegfried for what happens to him. Okay, maybe a little bad, but only because he has a moment of being horrified at what he's done to Brunnhilde once he regains his memory, just before he's... well, that would be telling. The problem is that he's regretful for the unintentional asshole move he made but, apparently, is perfectly okay with all of the other ways he's an asshole. Needless to say, Siegfried is a flawed hero, which is not a bad thing from a story perspective.

A thing I really liked in this production is the handling of the Rhine and the Rhinemaidens. Back in Das Rheingold when we first meet them, they are playing and cavorting in a pristine Rhine river. The world is young! Everything is fresh and good. But, when we find them again, here in Gotterdammerung, the Rhine is clogged with trash and pollution and the maidens seem to spend their time trying to get garbage out of their river. It was a very pointed touch, one I thought was great, especially now as we endure an administration that is doing everything it can to actively destroy the environment.

The most interesting aspect of Gotterdammerung is Brunnhilde's persistence in "punishing" Siegfried for the harm he did her even once she realizes it wasn't really his fault. But, then, some of what he did was because of whom he was as a person, which, as I've pointed out, wasn't all that great. So what wrongs does he do to Brunnhilde?
1. He compels her to have sex with him even after she has asked to remain pure. But she's cursed to obey his every order, so she can't actually turn him down when he presses the issue.
2. Once he's forgotten her, he enacts a subterfuge against her and gifts her to another man whom she is also compelled to obey through the curse on her.
3. You can surmise at that point that she has had to have sex with the second man, also against her will, though she would not have been able to actually tell him no. Thanks, Wotan!

The real tragedy in all of this is that Brunnhilde legitimately loves Siegfried. As she tells him, she loved him from before he was born. However, she doesn't let how she feels get in the way of what she feels is justice for his betrayal of her.

It was a good opera. All of them were.
I'd go back and do the 16 hours again. I think that says a lot.

Siegfried (an opera review post)

Ah, Siegfried, if only you had not been so stupid...
Perhaps.
But, then, opera contains a lot of tragedy, so maybe this was all inevitable.

However, it wasn't the dragon (pictured above) that will do him in, nor will he be done in in this opera.

You know, normally, battling a dragon isn't a thing you're going to see in a stage production. Normally, someone writing for a stage production, knowing how difficult it would be, is going to circumvent any dragon fighting on stage. Not Wagner. It makes me wonder how he staged this the first time it was performed. Not enough to do the research on it, but it does make me wonder. Of course, he did have a special theater built just for the Ring Cycle, so maybe I shouldn't wonder too hard.

Siegfried is the culmination of all of Wotan's meddling and impregnating women, the son of the twins Siegmund and Sieglinde. Maybe that accounts for his... lack... in the intellect department. Daniel Brenna does a great job with Siegfried's rather vacuous mode of being, a mode of being always looking for a fight, seemingly for no other reason than to fight. Maybe to prove that he's the best, but it seems he just approaches every situation with a "hey, let's fight" attitude. It doesn't hurt, I suppose, that he has a magic sword.

The fight with the dragon, Fafner, is important. Fafner is one of the giants from Das Rheingold; the one who ended up not dead and with the Ring. He's a dragon through the magic of the Tarnhelm, a shape he's taken to protect the Ring and his hoard of gold. So, just to be clear, Fafner has a ring which could allow him to rule the world and, yet, he's hiding in a cave in the form a dragon instead.

To flash back: Alberich, who forged the Ring, rather than using it to control the world, was busy using it to find more and more gold and amass it into a hoard, the hoard that Fafner is now protecting. At this point, I'm a bit hazy on what exactly the Ring does other than give the owner an extreme lust for gold.

Because it certainly doesn't save Fafner anymore than it saved Alberich from having Wotan cut it from his hand. But more on that later...

The best scene in this opera, possibly the best scene from the Cycle, happens just after Siegfried has defeated Fafner. See, Siegfried only fights the dragon because he was put up to it. Put up to it by his adopted father Mime, Alberich's brother, who lusts after the Ring and thinks he can outwit Siegfried to get the Ring if only Siegfried will kill the dragon. Honestly, this shouldn't have been very difficult to do but for one thing: Siegfried gains the temporary ability to hear Mime's thoughts and kills him instead. But David Cangelosi, as Mime, is fantastic in this scene. Every time he says something that comes out in words that reveal his true thoughts, his reaction is fabulous. It made me sad to see the character go.

But Mime is just another example of a "father" in this opera, using his "child" as a tool to achieve some selfish end. He needed to go.

Siegfried ends with Siegfried "rescuing" Brunnhilde, the former Valkyrie, from her "eternal" sleep, eternal being relative to however long it took a man to come along who was brave enough to walk through the flames to wake her with a kiss, so in this case about 20 years. Depending on how old Siegfried is. Of course, waking Brunnhilde just moves her along to the next portion of her punishment, the part where she has to marry the man who wakes and do whatever he commands of her.

So let's look back a moment:
Brunnhilde is Wotan's daughter, a previous immortal.
Siegfried is the grandson of Wotan twice over, since both of his parents were Wotan's kids. I believe that makes Brunnhilde Siegfried's aunt and, maybe, his cousin. It's actually a little confusing. At any rate, it's just a little more incest to add to the mix.
Oh, and, evidently, Brunnhilde is a virgin. At least, she goes on about how she's never been touched before for quite a while before she finally goes off with Siegfried to do the deed. What's a little incest among gods, um, ex-gods, right?

Just to be clear here, I'm leaving a lot of the plot out, because you can always look up the plot if you want to. My focus is on the production, themes, and pivotal moments. What I know for sure is that the Ring Cycle is a complex piece of work and I walked out of it, all 16 hours of it, being willing to go through that again for another viewing. There was no point where I was bored or felt like I was wasting my time.