(The Ring of the Nibelung), WWV 86, is a cycle of four German-language epic music dramas composed by Richard Wagner. The works are based loosely on characters from Germanic heroic legend, namely Norse legendary sagas and the . The composer termed the cycle a "" (stage festival play), structured in three days preceded by a ("preliminary evening"). It is often referred to as the Ring cycle, Wagner's Ring, or simply The Ring.
Wagner wrote the libretto and music over the course of about twenty-six years, from 1848 to 1874. The four parts that constitute the Ring cycle are, in sequence: Das Rheingold (The Rhinegold) Die Walküre (The Valkyrie) Siegfried Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods) Individual works of the sequence are often performed separately, and indeed the operas contain dialogues that mention events in the previous operas, so that a viewer could watch any of them without having watched the previous parts and still understand the plot. However, Wagner intended them to be performed in series. The first performance as a cycle opened the first Bayreuth Festival in 1876, beginning with Das Rheingold on 13 August and ending with Götterdämmerung on 17 August. Opera stage director Anthony Freud stated that "marks the high-water mark of our art form, the most massive challenge any opera company can undertake."
Title Wagner's title is most literally rendered in English as The Ring of the Nibelung. The Nibelung of the title is the dwarf Alberich, and the ring in question is the one he fashions from the Rhinegold. The title therefore denotes "Alberich's Ring".
Content The cycle is a work of extraordinary scale. A full performance of the cycle takes place over four nights at the opera, with a total playing time of about 15 hours, depending on the conductor's pacing. The first and shortest work, Das Rheingold, has no interval and is one continuous piece of music typically lasting around two and a half hours, while the final and longest, Götterdämmerung, takes up to five hours, excluding intervals. The cycle is modelled after ancient Greek dramas that were presented as three tragedies and one satyr play. The Ring proper begins with Die Walküre and ends with Götterdämmerung, with Rheingold as a prelude. Wagner called Das Rheingold a Vorabend or "Preliminary Evening", and Die Walküre, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung were subtitled First Day, Second Day and Third Day, respectively, of the trilogy proper.
The scale and scope of the story is epic. It follows the struggles of gods, heroes, and several mythical creatures over the eponymous magic ring that grants domination over the entire world. The drama and intrigue continue through three generations of protagonists, until the final cataclysm at the end of Götterdämmerung.
The music of the cycle is thick and richly textured, and grows in complexity as the cycle proceeds. Wagner wrote for an orchestra of gargantuan proportions, including a greatly enlarged brass section with instruments such as the Wagner tuba, bass trumpet and contrabass trombone. Remarkably, he uses a chorus only relatively briefly, in acts 2 and 3 of Götterdämmerung, and then mostly of men with just a few women. He eventually had a purpose-built theatre constructed, the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, in which to perform this work. The theatre has a special stage that blends the huge orchestra with the singers' voices, allowing them to sing at a natural volume. The result was that the singers did not have to strain themselves vocally during the long performances.
List of characters Gods Mortals Valkyries Rhinemaidens, Giants & Nibelungs Other characters Wotan: Fricka's husband, king of the gods and god of knowledge (bass-baritone) Fricka: Wotan's wife, queen of the gods and goddess of marriage (mezzo-soprano) Freia: Fricka's sister and goddess of love and youth (soprano) Froh: Fricka's brother and god of fertility (tenor) Donner: Fricka's brother and god of weather (baritone) Erda: The Norns and Valkyries' mother and goddess of earth, wisdom and prophecy (contralto) The Norns: Erda's daughters and the goddesses of fate (contralto, mezzo-soprano, soprano) Loge: demigod of cunning and fire (tenor)Wälsungs Siegmund: Wotan's mortal son, Sieglinde's twin brother and Siegfried's father (tenor) Sieglinde: Wotan's mortal daughter, Siegmund's twin sister and Siegfried's mother (soprano) Siegfried: Siegmund and Sieglinde's son and Brünnhilde's lover (heldentenor) Neidings Hunding: Sieglinde's husband and king of the Neidings (bass) Gibichungs Gunther: Gibich and Grimhilda's son, Gutrune's brother and king of the Gibichungs (baritone) Gutrune: Gibich and Grimhilda's daughter and Gunther's sister (soprano) Hagen: Alberich and Grimhilda's son and Gunther and Gutrune's maternal half-brother (bass) A male choir of Gibichung vassals and a small female choir of Gibichung women Brünnhilde: Wotan and Erda's immortal daughter and Siegfried's lover (soprano) Gerhilde: Wotan and Erda's immortal daughter and Brünnhilde's sister (soprano) Ortlinde: Wotan and Erda's immortal daughter and Brünnhilde's sister (soprano) Waltraute: Wotan and Erda's immortal daughter and Brünnhilde's sister (mezzo-soprano) Schwertleite: Wotan and Erda's immortal daughter and Brünnhilde's sister (contralto) Helmwige: Wotan and Erda's immortal daughter and Brünnhilde's sister (soprano) Siegrune: Wotan and Erda's immortal daughter and Brünnhilde's sister (mezzo-soprano) Grimgerde: Wotan and Erda's immortal daughter and Brünnhilde's sister (contralto) Rossweisse: Wotan and Erda's immortal daughter and Brünnhilde's sister (mezzo-soprano)Rhinemaidens Woglinde: Wellgunde and Flosshilde's sister and guardian of Rhine gold (soprano) Wellgunde: Woglinde and Flosshilde's sister and guardian of Rhine gold (soprano) Flosshilde: Woglinde and Wellgunde's sister and guardian of Rhine gold (mezzo-soprano) Giants Fasolt: Fafner's brother and king of the giants (bass-baritone/high bass) Fafner: Fasolt's brother and later turned into a dragon (bass) Nibelungs Alberich: Mime's brother and Hagen's father (bass-baritone) Mime: Alberich's brother and Siegfried's foster father (tenor) The Voice of a Woodbird: a parlant bird and Siegfried's ally (soprano)
List of characters by appearance CharacterDas RheingoldDie WalküreSiegfriedGötterdämmerungWotanFrickaLogeFreiaDonnerFrohErdaWoglindeWellgundeFlosshildeFasoltFafnerAlberichMimeSiegmundSieglindeHundingBrünnhildeGerhildeOrtlindeWaltrauteSchwertleiteHelmwigeSiegruneGrimgerdeRossweisseSiegfriedThe WoodbirdThe NornsGuntherGutruneHagenVassalsWomen
Story
The plot revolves around a magic ring that grants the power to rule the world, forged by the Nibelung dwarf Alberich from gold he stole from the Rhine maidens in the river Rhine. With the assistance of the god Loge, Wotan – the chief of the gods – steals the ring from Alberich, but is forced to hand it over to the giants Fafner and Fasolt in payment for building the home of the gods, Valhalla; otherwise they will take Freia, who provides the gods with the golden apples that keep them young. Wotan's schemes to regain the ring, spanning generations, drive much of the action in the story. His grandson, the mortal Siegfried, wins the ring by slaying Fafner (who slew Fasolt for the ring) – as Wotan intended – but is eventually betrayed and slain as a result of the intrigues of Alberich's son Hagen, who wants the ring for himself. Finally, the Valkyrie Brünnhilde – Siegfried's lover and Wotan's daughter, who lost her immortality for defying her father in an attempt to save Siegfried's father Siegmund – bequeaths the ring to the Rhine maidens as she commits suicide on Siegfried's funeral pyre. Hagen is drowned by the Rhine maidens as he attempts to recover the ring. In the process, the gods and Valhalla are destroyed by fire.
Wagner developed the story of the Ring by fusing elements from many Germanic and Scandinavian myths and folk-tales. The Old Norse Edda texts supplied much of the material for Das Rheingold, while Die Walküre was largely based on the Völsunga saga. Siegfried contains elements from the , the Völsunga saga and Thidrekssaga. The final Götterdämmerung draws from the 12th-century German poem, the , which appears to have been the original inspiration for the Ring.For a detailed examination of Wagner's sources for the Ring and his treatment of them, see, among other works, Deryck Cooke's unfinished study of the Ring, I Saw the World End , and Ernest Newman's Wagner Nights. Also useful is a translation by Stewart Spencer (Wagner's 'Ring of the Nibelung': Companion, edited by Barry Millington) which, as well as containing essays, including one on the source-material which provides an English translation of the entire text that strives to remain faithful to the early-medieval Stabreim technique Wagner used.
The Ring has been the subject of myriad interpretations. For example, George Bernard Shaw, in The Perfect Wagnerite (1898), argues for a view of The Ring as an essentially socialist critique of industrial society and its abuses. Robert Donington in Wagner's Ring and Its Symbols (1963) interprets it in terms of Jungian psychology, as an account of the development of unconscious archetypes in the mind, leading towards individuation.
Concept In his earlier operas (up to and including Lohengrin) Wagner's style had been based, rather than on the Italian style of opera, on the German style as developed by Carl Maria von Weber, with elements of the grand opera style of Giacomo Meyerbeer. However he came to be dissatisfied with such a format as a means of artistic expression. He expressed this clearly in his essay "A Communication to My Friends" (1851), in which he condemned the majority of modern artists, in painting and in music, as "feminine ... the world of art close fenced from Life, in which Art plays with herself.' Where however the impressions of Life produce an overwhelming 'poetic force', we find the 'masculine, the generative path of Art'.
Wagner unfortunately found that his audiences were not willing to follow where he led them:
Finally Wagner announces:
This is his first public announcement of the form of what would become the Ring cycle.
In accordance with the ideas expressed in his essays of the period 1849–51 (including the "Communication" but also Opera and Drama and "The Artwork of the Future"), the four parts of the Ring were originally conceived by Wagner to be free of the traditional operatic concepts of aria and operatic chorus. The Wagner scholar Curt von Westernhagen identified three important problems discussed in "Opera and Drama" which were particularly relevant to the Ring cycle: the problem of unifying verse stress with melody; the disjunctions caused by formal arias in dramatic structure and the way in which opera music could be organised on a different basis of organic growth and modulation; and the function of musical motifs in linking elements of the plot whose connections might otherwise be inexplicit. This became known as the leitmotif technique (see below), although Wagner himself did not use this word.
However, Wagner relaxed some aspects of his self-imposed restrictions somewhat as the work progressed. As George Bernard Shaw sardonically noted of the last opera Götterdämmerung:
Music
Leitmotifs As a significant element in the Ring and his subsequent works, Wagner adopted the use of leitmotifs, which are recurring themes or harmonic progressions. They musically denote an action, object, emotion, character, or other subject mentioned in the text or presented onstage. Wagner referred to them in "Opera and Drama" as "guides-to-feeling", describing how they could be used to inform the listener of a musical or dramatic subtext to the action onstage in the same way as a Greek chorus did for the theatre of ancient Greece.
Instrumentation