The Ring Cycle | The Ring Cycle The Ring Cycle Information on The Ring Cycle including music recordings, events calendar, librettos, videos, and Richard Wagner's Autobiography Search for: You are here: Home / The Ring Cycle The Ring Cycle The Ring Cycle – Der Ring des Nibelungen – The Ring of the Nibelung Brunnhilde in flames The Ring Cycle is a common abbreviation for Der Ring des Nibelungen (English translation – The Ring of the Nibelung), by German composer Richard Wagner. The Ring of the Nibelung is made up of a cycle of four epic operas that if played consecutively would last for about 15 hours. Wagner wrote both the music and the libretto, taking his inspiration from the Norse sagas and the Nibelungenlied (a 12th century German poem). The four operatic dramas are actually a trilogy with a prelude making up the fourth part. NOTE: Some people translate “Der Ring des Nibelungen” as “The Ring of the Nibelungs” but this is not correct.

In German the ‘-en’ ending of ‘Nibelungen’ and the article ‘des’ preceding it denotes the possessive (genitive) case making the correct translation to be Nibelung in English and not Nibelungs. Brunnhilde the Valkyrie In chronological order of the events contained in each opera, The Ring of the Nibelung consists of – Das Rheingold (The Rhine Gold) – Prelude Die Walküre (The Valkyrie) – First Day of the Trilogy Siegfried (Siegfried) – Second Day of the Trilogy Götterdämmerung (The Twilight of the Gods) – Third Day of the Trilogy As well as being an epic production in its own right, Der Ring des Nibelungen was also an epic in writing taking Wagner about twenty-six years, from 1848 to 1874 to complete. Each opera can stand on its own but the authors intention was that they be performed as a series. Wagner worked on and off again on the Ring during the twenty-six years between when it was first started and when it was completed.

He wrote the poems of the four operas in the late 1840s and early 1850s; the music for Das Rheingold in 1853–54, that for Die Walküre in 1854–56; and in 1856–57 Wagner composed, though he did not score, the first two acts of Siegfried. However, at this point in time he took a break from The Ring for twelve years, in order to concentrate on Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. It was always in his mind to complete The Ring and in 1869 he got back to work on the epic again. Despite the long break his enthusiasm and inspiration had not diminished. He completed Siegfried between 1869–74 as well as Götterdämmerung. The first performance of Das Rheingold was in Munich on 22 September 1869, and it took until 13 August 1876 before it was performed as part of the complete Ring cycle at Bayreuth – where it is still performed today.

Today we can enjoy performances of the Wagner Ring Cycle as both live performances by world famous opera houses, or as high quality recordings on CD and DVD . In addition there are modern translations of Wagner’s libretto that make it easy to follow the storyline and understand the plot. The passage of time has confirmed Wagner’s “Der Ring Des Nibelungen” as one of the classic operas of all time, and although it may not enjoy the heights of popularity it enjoyed before World War 1, it still attracts sold out houses wherever it is performed in the world today. If you cannot find something on this page, Search Google Search for: Brief Summary of the Ring A Brief Synopsis of Der Ring des Nibelungen Background (from Alan Blyth's Wagner's Ring: An introduction, 4-5). "In November 1851, Wagner drafted a first scenario for Das Rheingold, projected in three acts, with the title The Rape of the Rheingold. Then came a tentative sketch for Die Walkure, or at least two acts of it... by December 1852 he was able to write at the end of his huge manuscript: 'Close of the stage-festival play'.

By now he had come to see that no known stage could present his vast work adequately: a specially built festival theatre would be required." "So, by 1853 Wagner was at last ready to begin composing the music. For this he began at the beginning with Das Rheingold, now reduced from three acts to one. That work took him...six months. Die Walkure was begun in the summer of 1854 and completed in the spring of 1856, when Siegfried was started. The first two acts took him from September that year until July 1857. Then came the big break during which he wrote Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger no less, before he resumed work on Siegfried in March 1869. Gotterdammerung was begun in the autumn of that year and completed on 21 November 1874." Plot Summaries of the Four Operas of the Ring Cycle 1. Das Rheingold: "Rhinegold" The first act of this first opera begins with a scene in which a dwarf named Alberich seizes the gold of the Rhinemaidens.

Alberich denounces love in order to gain possession of the magic ring which gives its wearer ultimate power. This scene sets up the Ring as the most desireable object in the world, and thus it establishes the fundamental intrigue that lasts throughout the entire cycle of the Ring. Rhinegold is the story of the gods, possibly more so than the rest of the operas. One learns of the suffering of Wotan and the problems the gods have in repaying Fafner and Fasolt, the giants who built Valhalla. Since Wagner created Rhinegold to be the "Prelude" to the Ring, this opera perhaps is not as "free-standing" as the other works. Nevertheless, Rhinegold introduces "the main lines of The Ring's dramatic conflict" and "many of the cycle's main musical ideas" (Blyth, 29). 2. Die Walkure: "The Valkyries" Brunnhilde and her father Wotan respectively struggle with their pride in order to decide the ultimate destiny of mortals. The Valkyries deals with the deep, but difficult relationship between gods and mortals. These gods also play games with one another, picking favorites and taking sides.

Nobleness, especially in love, seems to come second to oaths--the divine promises--of the gods. Siegmund, the mortal hero, essentially dies because his father, Wotan, is under obligation to obey his lawful wife, Fricka. 3. Siegfried "Siegfried is often called the Scherzo of The Ring, suggesting that it is the lightest of the four dramas..." (Blyth, 83). It is the story of a hero, Siegfried, and how he grows into manhood to discover fear and love. Raised by the Nibelung Mime, Siegfried is young, innocent and cocky. With the help of a mysterious Wanderer (who is really Wotan in disguise), Siegfried finds the pieces of his father's sword, Notung, reforges them and uses the instrument to kill the dragon Fafner who guards the hoard of Nibelung gold that formerly belonged to the Rhinemaidens. As a result of his killing of Fafner, Siegfried comes into possession of Alberich's cursed ring.

But, Siegfried faces his ultimate challenge when he follows a birdsong to find the sleeping Brunnhilde whom fate has destined Siegfried to awaken and fall in love with. At the end of the opera, Siegfried gives the Ring to Brunnhilde to prove and symbolize his oath of love and fidelity to her. 4. Gotterdammerung: "The Twilight of the Gods" An ambiance of doom overabides The Twilight of the Gods. Wotan and the rest of the cycle's characters face the consequences of the choices they made throughout the stories of the first three operas. As predicted by the three Norns in the "Prelude" to this opera, the Nibelung Alberich's curse upon the Ring proves to be prophetic. Everyone who comes into possession of it is ultimately destroyed. Although Wotan's disempowerment was foreshadowed in Siegfried by the breaking of his spear by Siegfried, the doomed fate of the gods and their All-Father Wotan is sealed when Alberich's evil son, Hagen dupes and cruelly murders the brave mortal hero Siegfried.

Thus, The Twilight of the Gods , which is "a panorama of love and betrayal, good and evil, subconscious and overt events, grand, pictorial and private, intimate scenes" is "the climax of the whole Ring cycle" and "shows Wagner at zenith of his powers" (Blyth, 115). A First-Timer's Guide to Wagner's Ring This material © 1999 by Eric Rawlins. All rights reserved. The Story Wagner originally conceived of an opera to be called Siegfried's Death. He began work on the project around 1850. As he worked on the poem, he expanded it to include a "prequel" to be called The Young Siegfried. Eventually even that wouldn't hold his story, and it ended up in its present form of 3 operas plus an introduction. He worked on the cycle over several decades. After finishing up through Act II of Siegfried, he put the project aside from 1858 until about 1870, during which time he wrote both Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger. The complete cycle was finished in 1874.

The story comes, in a very general way, from the old Norse/Germanic legend of the Nibelungenlied ("The Song of the Dwarves"). I once tried to read a translation of the Nibelungenlied,but it had so little to do with Wagner's epic that I lost interest. Wagner had his own interests, and he wanted to invoke his ancestral legends and put them to use to say what he wanted to say, and what was on his mind was the relationship between love and earthly power, and themes of yearning and loss. Like J. R. R. Tolkien, Wagner had an instinct for mythic storytelling, and so his very much invented story feels like something far older than it is. Neither Wagner nor Tolkien knew of Joseph Campbell, of course, but both their stories contain many of the same classic elements of the Hero Myth: Both center around a ring of power, and the attempts of various people to acquire it. In both, the ring carries with it a corrupting curse. Both feature an all-conquering sword which is broken and later reforged. Both involve a romantic partnership between a human hero-knight and a demigod female.

Both involve a hero who fails and dies, but whose descendant, after a period of hiding in the wilderness, returns to fulfill the quest. Both feature a wise old man with a staff that is more than just a stick of wood. The main protagonist of the Ring is not Siegfried (who was famously compared once to Li'l Abner) but Wotan, the king of the Gods. Wotan is a man who wants power, and the story is about how he sought it and the price he ultimately paid. He began his career (long before the story begins) when, as a young God, he cut a branch off the World Ash Tree, source of all wisdom and power, gave one eye in payment, and made from it a spear. Over the years Wotan increased his power by making treaties, which were inscribed on his spear as the embodiment of that power, until he made himself chief of all the Gods. And there Wagner's story begins... Das Rheingold The story begins in the depths of the Rhine river, where the three Rhinemaidens (think "mermaids") are playing in a state of primal state-of-nature innocence.

Enter Alberich the Nibelung (dwarf) from a fissure beneath the earth, who spies the three and lusts after them. The Rhinemaidens taunt him and humiliate him for his ugliness and awkwardness. In his rage at being rejected, Alberich steals the Rhinegold from them, having learned that he who is willing to renounce love will thereby gain the ability to forge a ring of power from the gold. The maidens had assumed that no one in his right mind would make such a renunciation, but Alberich is enraged and wants revenge. He disappears with the gold, leaving the bereft maidens to sing a song of loss and grief that will reappear all through the four operas. Alberich forges the ring and makes himself lord over all the Nibelungen. Meanwhile, Wotan wants a grand castle for the gods to live in as a testament to his greatness. He has contracted with the two giants Fasolt and Fafner to build him the castle.

On the advice of the wily Loge, god of fire, Wotan has promised the Giants Freia, goddess of youth and beauty, in return for the building; Loge has assured Wotan that he will find him a way out of the deal. Fasolt and Fafner, having finished the castle, come for their payment. Wotan is stuck; since all his power rests on the treaties inscribed into his spear, he cannot renege on the deal, and the giants make off with the terrified Freia. Loge, having learned of Alberich's ring, suggests to Wotan that they steal it from Alberich and offer it to the giants as a substitute payment. Wotan agrees, though he secretly plans to keep the ring for himself. The two go down into the earth to Nibelheim where the dwarves live. There Alberich has enslaved the dwarves and forced them to mine him an enormous pile of gold. Wotan and Loge succeed in kidnapping Alberich and take him back to the gods' abode on the mountain top. There they relieve Alberich of the hoard and of the ring.

Alberich is as shattered by the loss of his ring as Gollum ever thought of being. He places on the ring a terrible curse, bringing endless misery to all who possess or seek it. Wotan and Loge offer the giants Alberich's hoard of gold in return for Freia. Fafner accepts, though Fasolt has by now become rather sweet on Freia and wants to keep her. The hoard is piled up, but Fafner wants one last thing: Alberich's ring, now on Wotan's finger. Wotan refuses, the giants threaten to call off the deal and leave with Freia, and in the middle of the hubbub there appears out of the ground Erda ("earth"), goddess of the earth and the world's wisest woman. She warns Wotan to flee the ring's curse, foretells that a death-laden day is coming for the gods, and disappears. Wotan relents and gives the ring to the giants, who immediately fall to arguing about the division of the spoils. Fafner kills Fasolt on the spot, and goes off with the loot.

The problem resolved for the time being, Wotan and the rest of the gods prepare to enter into the new castle, which Wotan dubs "Walhall"--literally, the "hall of the fallen heroes." Fricka, his wife, asks him the meaning of the name, and Wotan says, "If what I'm planning works out, its meaning will become clear to you." The gods enter Valhalla, as the Rhinemaidens sing a mournful song of loss. Between the two operas What Wotan is planning, which doesn't become apparent until the next opera, is this, and it forms the driving notion of the entire plot: Because of his dependence on treaties, Wotan cannot himself take the ring back from Fafner; but if he can create a hero who is not dependent on him, who is not acting as Wotan's agent, that hero could slay Fafner and win the ring back for him. Wotan, always a great womanizer, descends to earth in human guise as "Wälse" and sires a pair of twins, Siegmund and Sieglinde, on an earthly mother.

He then abandons them to their fate, and starts paying visits to Erda the earth goddess. Erda bears him eight immortal daughters--the Valkyries (Walküre: "bearer of the fallen heroes"). Bearing in mind Erda's prediction of a final Armageddon of the Gods, Wotan instructs the Valkyries to roam the earth, inciting men to make war on each other so as to find the most valiant warriors, and when they fall in battle to carry them to Valhalla to abide with the Gods and (by the way) defend Valhalla in its eventual apocalyptic battle against Alberich's army. (The Valkyries are female, but they are warlike females. Not only that, Brünnhilde has to have a voice capable of outshouting a full Wagnerian orchestra for 4-plus hours. Hence the cliche of the massive armor-girt soprano with breastplates and horns.) Die Walküre A dark and stormy night (yes).

Siegmund ("victorious") arrives exhausted and weaponless at the home of Hunding (literally, "son of a bitch"), where he is tended by Sieglinde, Hunding's wife. (Hunding is a great character--a big, hulking brute whose entire life revolves around notions of kinship and warrior's honor.) Hunding recognizes Siegmund as his tribe's enemy, and tells him he can spend the night there, but Hunding intends to kill him in the morning. Left alone, Siegmund ruminates on his father Wälse, and his promise that Siegmund would find a magic sword in his hour of need. Sure enough, the sword is stuck in the ash tree that grows through Hunding's house; it has been there for years, and no one has been able to draw it forth. Sieglinde appears, and the two recognize both their kinship and their love for each other. Siegmund draws the sword, and he and Sieglinde run off together into the night. Back in Valhalla, Wotan's wife Fricka is furious.

She is the goddess of hearth and family, and here is Sieglinde renouncing her marriage vows and running off with her own twin brother. She demands to Wotan that Siegmund must die in the coming fight. Wotan explains that Siegmund is his only hope for a hero that will reclaim the ring for him. Fricka points out that, by giving Siegmund his sword, Wotan has taken away any claim Siegmund might have had to being a free agent, and therefore can't win the ring anyway. Wotan is trapped, and sadly agrees to Siegmund's death. He tells Brünnhilde to give the victory to Hunding. Brünnhilde is shocked that Wotan would turn against his cherished son, whom she too has loved from afar, but Wotan is firm and angrily orders Brünnhilde to do his bidding. Brünnhilde confronts Siegmund while Sieglinde lies asleep in exhaustion, and tells him he is about to die and be taken to Valhalla. Siegmund asks about Valhalla, and Brünnhilde describes it in glowing terms.

Finally, Siegmund asks if Sieglinde will be there with him; Brünnhilde says no. Siegmund says, "So greet for me Wotan and all the fallen heroes, for I will abide here." Torn by grief and moved by Siegmund's courage, Brünnhilde rebels against Wotan's will and assures Siegmund that she will protect him. At the moment of battle, Wotan appears and shatters the magic sword with his spear. Siegmund is killed. Brünnhilde gathers up Sieglinde and the shards of the sword, mounts her horse and flees. Act III opens with the famous "Ride of the Valkyries" as all eight gather on a mountain top with their load of fallen heroes preparatory to taking them to Valhalla. Brünnhilde appears with Sieglinde, in terror of the coming wrath of Wotan. To protect Sieglinde she sends her off with the shards of the sword to hide in the forest, telling her that she carries Siegmund's child.

Wotan appears, threatening thundering destruction to all who shield Brünnhilde, and the Valkyries flee in terror. In punishment for her disobedience, Wotan condemns her to sleep on a rock on a mountain top, to become the mortal bride of whatever man awakens her. As a consolation, he agrees to surround the rock with terrifying fire, so that only a man who knows no fear can reach her. Wotan has thus in short order been forced to renounce his two most beloved children--Siegmund and Brünnhilde. He is by now a very different person than the vigorous, ambitious God we first met. He knows now that he will from this point on be alone, and that he is powerless to keep Erda's predictions from coming true. From now on he is a spectator in the story's action. Siegfried In the forest, Sieglinde has been taken in by Mime the Nibelung, brother of Alberich. He knows the whole story and is only helping her in hopes of using the hero she is to bear to get the ring for himself. Sieglinde dies in childbirth, and Mime raises Siegfried to young manhood.

Siegfried is a child of nature, totally uneducated and not even very bright, but strong and--literally--fearless. He reforges his father's sword, and Mime takes him to Fafner to teach him about fear. Fafner has used the ring to turn himself into a dragon, where he sits in a cave and guards the Nibelung hoard. Mime brews up a cup of poison, which he plans to give to Siegfried as soon as he has slain Fafner. Siegfried kills Fafner (quite pitilessly; Fafner is not looking for trouble). Tasting of Fafner's blood, Siegfried finds he can understand the language of the birds, who tell him of the hoard and the ring and of Mime's treachery. Siegfried kills Mime. The birds then tell him of the woman lying asleep on a rock, and Siegfried sets off to find her. On the way, Siegfried comes across Wotan, now in the guise of a Wanderer. Wotan tries to bar Siegfried's way.

Siegfried, in a reversal of the action in Die Walküre, breaks Wotan's spear with his sword. Wotan's power is broken, and he slinks off, not to be seen again in the opera cycle. Siegfried climbs the mountain, strides through the magic fire, and awakens the sleeping Brünnhilde. (A note on Siegfried: He is a most unlikable character--arrogant, conscienceless, more than a little stupid, quite happy to slaughter people for the slightest of reasons, easily manipulated by other characters. My biggest problem with this story is that I simply can't fathom what Brünnhilde sees in the big lunk. He behaves so abominably that when he dies one is almost relieved.) Götterdammerung ("Twilight of the Gods") Siegfried takes his leave of Brünnhilde to seek adventure and heroic deeds. His travels down from the mountain top are described in the orchestral passage called "Siegfried's Rhine Journey." He ends up in the kingdom of the Gibichungs along the Rhine.

The Gibichungs are a gloomy and none too bright bunch, where king Gunther is advised and controlled by Hagen, Alberich's son by a human woman. They hail Siegfried as a great hero, and Siegfried in his naiveté swears blood-brotherhood with Gunther. Hagen slips Siegfried a potion that makes him forget Brünnhilde and fall in love with Gutrune, Gunther's sister. Siegfried proposes to Gutrune and then, when told about Brünnhilde on her rock, agrees to capture her to be Gunther's wife. As Brünnhilde sits on her rock, she is visited by one of the other Valkyries. It seems that Wotan came home one day from his travels with his spear in two pieces. He instructed that kindling be piled all around Valhalla, and sent two ravens out into the world as messengers. Since then he sits, the fallen heroes ranged around him in the great hall, waiting for the ravens to return and signal the end of the Gods.

She asks Brünnhilde to help, but Brünnhilde says she is now a mortal woman with the love of a mortal man and is no longer concerned with the fate of the Gods. After the Valkyrie leaves, Siegfried shows up disguised as Gunther and carries Brünnhilde most unwillingly off to the Gibichungs. The double wedding is planned amidst great merriment. Hagen's plan is to kill Siegfried on a hunting trip and claim the ring. While on the hunting trip, Siegfried passes by the Rhine and encounters the three Rhinemaidens, who chide him as the foolish child he is, and warn him that his life is in danger. Siegfried, ever confident, laughs at their warning, and Hagen duly slays him with a spear in the back. There follows the other great orchestral passage of this opera, "Siegfried's Funeral March." Back at the Gibichungs there is much acrimony, as Gutrune has been done out of a husband and Gunther out of a blood-brother. Hagen claims the ring on Siegfried's dead hand and moves to take it.

At that moment Brünnhilde appears. This is the "Immolation Scene," the longest single aria in the operatic literature. Brünnhilde orders Siegfried's body placed on a funeral pyre. She takes the ring from his finger in preparation to giving it back to the Rhine and thus cleansing the earth of the curse at last. The funeral pyre is lit, and Brünnhilde rides onto it on her horse. The fire consumes all, and the Rhine rises to flood the room. Hagen cries, "The ring is mine!" but is dragged to his death by the Rhinemaidens, who reclaim their gold at last. In the distance, Valhalla can be seen to be burning. The orchestra in these last moments plays a wonderful melange of the motives Valhalla, Magic Fire, and Redemption By Love, as the curtain falls.

OPERA NEWS - Der Ring des Nibelungen Der Ring des Nibelungen Greer Grimsley as Seattle Opera's Wotan in this year's revival of Die Walküre © Alan Alabastro 2013 Stefan Vinke as Seattle Opera's Siegfried in Stephen Wadsworth's staging © Elise Bakketun 2013 Stephanie Blythe (Fricka) and Greer Grimsley (Wotan) in Die Walküre © Elise Bakketun 2013 When will Seattle Opera next present Wagner's Ring? Will it be in a new physical production? Or will the current production — the company's third — return, as it has at four-year intervals since it bowed in full in 2001? These are big questions for Seattle's general director designate, Aidan Lang, and his board. Judging by the response to Seattle's current revival of the cycle — the last of general director Speight Jenkins's tenure — audiences certainly don't seem ready to let the company's beloved "Green Ring" go.

This year it was better than ever, for many reasons but three main ones: Stephen Wadsworth's staging reached new levels of thoughtfulness and intensity; A sher Fisch's conducting gave unprecedented musical strength; and German heldentenor Stefan Vinke's Siegfried was outstanding, the best Seattle has experienced. (I saw the first of three cycles, Aug. 4–9.) In this Ring, the most-loved of set designer Thomas Lynch and lighting designer Peter Kaczorowski's scenes derive from today's Washington state. Das Rheingold's gods and giants convene among stately Douglas firs on a rocky, mossy ridge inspired by Olympic National Park's Hurricane Ridge; two generations later, Mime dwells there near a decomposing log, which in the cycle's hopeful, moving last image is a nurse log sprouting saplings. Brünnhilde's rocky height looks like a trail blasted into a cliff face, like the Kendall Katwalk on the Pacific Crest Trail east of Seattle. Used three times is a scene a Northwest hiker sees countless times: a trail descends to a stream, and instead of Wagnerians in Martin Pakledinaz's timeless robes, one half- expects to see backpackers with trekking poles.

The three uses enable Wadsworth to invoke visual leitmotifs: Siegfried wonders what his father was like on the spot where Siegmund was slain — and where Siegfried will slay Fafner and himself be slain — and wonders what his mother was like on the spot where Sieglinde slept. Wadsworth finds good in apparently unsympathetic characters and love in apparently toxic relationships. Loge, no cynic here, mentions the Rhinemaidens every chance he gets, not to bait Wotan but because he's a real advocate for them. Fasolt's death deeply disturbs the gods, even macho Donner, who sensitively, softly begins his call, only gradually raising the volume to dispel the mists and rouse the gods from their funk. Fricka, conscience of the world, is big enough to vehemently oppose Wotan and at the same ￼￼time passionately love him. Siegfried throttles then cradles Mime, the only parent he ever knew. Even Hagen has a conscience and seems driven to pursue a ring he doesn't really want.

Each time Fisch mounted the podium for a second or third act, the audience gave him and the orchestra, composed mostly of Seattle Symphony musicians, a mighty roar. No wonder, for they played beautifully, varied dynamics, built satisfying climaxes and expressed the intensity of Wadsworth's staging. Act II of Die Walküre, for instance, stormed to its finish with slashing chords that echoed the ferocity of the Siegmund–Hunding fight, Sieglinde's screams and Wotan's anger. As Siegfried, Vinke exposed his one flaw early — an occluded midrange in which he was no match for Dennis Petersen's superb Mime in tone, technique, expressivity or diction. But when the line rose at all high, whether singing tenderly or heroically, Vinke excelled. And he had energy to burn: whether forging his sword, whittling his reed pipe, leaping among rocks or twirling the Wanderer's hat on his sword point, he reveled in the role's physicality. In Götterdämmerung, his two high Cs were the most full- voiced I've ever heard from a Siegfried.

Stuart Skelton sang an exemplary Siegmund, with long, gleaming held tones at "Wälse!" Loge could be a character tenor or a heldentenor, but Mark Schowalter took a lovely, lyrical third approach. Add Ric Furman's sweet-toned Froh, and the tenor casting was five-for-five. Das Rheingold with Markus Brück (Donner), Andrea Silvestrelli (Fasolt), Wendy Bryn Harmer (Freia), Greer Grimsley (Wotan), Stephanie Blythe (Fricka), Ric Furman (Froh), and Mark Schowalter (Loge) © Elise Bakketun 2013 English soprano Alwyn Mellor, Seattle's new Brünnhilde, showed an easy-enough top in Die Walküre's battle cry and final scene, but in her midrange she repeatedly struggled to produce much sound, perhaps already affected by the virus that would sideline her for Siegfried and Götterdämmerung. Lori Phillips, her cover, who had rehearsed for three months but never with orchestra, sang the last two evenings of the first cycle.

Phillips glanced anxiously at Fisch a few times but seemed comfortable with the staging. Her singing showed remarkable security and, especially in the immolation scene, good upper-register power. In the roles of Wotan and the Wanderer, Greer Grimsley's black, George London-like bass-baritone again ruled, with acting even more intense than before. Also mining expressive depths was Richard Paul Fink's Alberich, a pillar of the production from its start, along with Margaret Jane Wray's Sieglinde and Stephanie Blythe's mother of all Frickas. Wray, always able to "out-decibel" her Brünnhildes, was searing at full throttle. Blythe, magnificent as Fricka, scaled down her huge voice while singing Waltraute's narrative in Götterdämmerung. Luretta Bybee (First Norn) couldn't be faulted for not equaling Blythe (Second Norn) and Wray (Third Norn). Lucille Beer was a weak, tremulous Erda.

Markus Brück sang handsomely as Donner and Gunther, Grimsley's starter roles in this production in 2001. As ideal as Jeanne Cook and Marie Plette seemed in past iterations of this cycle, Wendy Bryn Harmer's bright-toned, beautiful singing set new Seattle standards for Freia and Gutrune. The swimming, flipping Rhinemaidens, who played the focused piping of Jennifer Zetlan (Woglinde) off the round, sensuous tones of Cecelia Hall (Wellgunde) and Renée Tatum (Flosshilde), also raised the bar. Harmer (Gerhilde), Hall (Rossweisse) and Tatum (Grimgerde) were among the best of an uneven Valkyrie octet. Zetlan warbled winningly as the Forest Bird. Neither bass was fully satisfying. Andrea Silvestrelli's very individual sound — wild and woolly, uncouth and barbaric — was apt for Hunding, less so for the sympathetic Fasolt. Daniel Sumegi, solid and biting but dry and colorless as Fafner, rallied for a moderately strong Hagen.

The Gibichung vassals he summoned were powerfully vocalized by the men's chorus. MARK MANDEL Der Ring des Nibelungen | Wagneropera.net Der Ring des Nibelungen Anne Evans as Brünnhilde in Harry Kupfer's Ring production at Bayreuth. Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Nibelung's Ring / The Ring of the Nibelung) is called "ein Bühnenfestspiel für drei Tage und einen Vorabend" (a stage festival drama for three days and a preliminary evening). Siegfried (Zweiter Tag) Götterdämmerung (The Twilight of the Gods; Dritter Tag) Der Ring des Nibelungen had its world premiere at the first festival in Bayreuth in 1876. Three cycles were performed. Richard Wagner was stage director and Hans Richter was the conductor. Artists and celebrities from all over the world had come to Bayreuth to be a part of this event. The next time the complete Ring was produced in Bayreuth was in 1896.

Premiere cast at the first Bayreuther Festspiele 1876 Das Rheingold: Cast 13 August 1876 Conductor Hans Richter Die Walküre: Cast 14 August 1876 Conductor Hans Richter Siegfried: Cast 16 August 1876 Conductor Hans Richter Waldvogel (the woodbird) Marie Haupt Erda Luise Jaide Götterdammerung: Cast 17 August 1876 Conductor Hans Richter Ring performances the first years after the world premiere: 1878 Berlin (Angelo Neumann's travelling Wagner-Theatre with guest performances in Berliner Viktoria-Theater) 1882–1883 Angelo Neumann's travelling Wagner-Theatre on tour: London (Her Majesty's Theatre), Breslau, Königsberg, Danzig, Hannover, Bremen, Barmen, Dresden, Amsterdam, Brüssel, Aachen, Düsseldorf, Mainz, Darmstadt, Karlsruhe, Strassburg, Stuttgart, Basel, Venice, Bologna, Rome, Torino, Triest, Budapest, Graz – totaling 135

 performances of the Ring!

Said about Der Ring des Nibelungen James Levine, Musical Director, The Metropolitan Opera Wagner’s Ring is one of those works of art that you think you know, but every time you return to it, you find brilliant moments that hadn’t struck you with the same force before. Peter Tchaikovsky on Der Ring des Nibelungen Wagner's tetralogy is so complicated and so finely detailed that much time is necessary for a study of it - and it really ought to be heard often. In a letter to Modeste Tchaikovsky, written 14 August 1876 ( Bayreuth - The Early Years ) Edvard Grieg Every performance is so exhausting emotionally that it leaves one quite worn out. Edvard Grieg, 17 August 1876 Siegfried's death and Funeral march Klaus Tennstedt, London Philharmonic, Suntory Hall (Tokyo, Japan) One of the finest monuments in sound ever to have been raised to the everlasting glory of music. (Claude Debussy on Parsifal) "The thing about Wagner is that there can be no true success in any production of his operas, only degrees of failure.

There is so much in these bloody pieces, all you can do is try to live up to them." (Keith Warner, The Guardian ) "I have never come across an audience with so much hatred, so much anger, such a thirst for revenge. They take everything personally. It makes you a little bit scared, and it's really quite terrifying." (Lance Ryan on the audiences at Bayreuth) "People sometimes complain that Wagner operas are too long, that they get stiff and sore about 10.30 because they have rushed in to hear one of his works straight from work and are not properly prepared for listening to his music. The audience, as much as the artists, must be prepared for a performance." (Benjamin Britten to Alan Blyth, Gramophone ) "I was bowled over. It was the year after Wieland Wagner had died; to be able to see his productions was a total knock-out. These bare stagings, where everything was done with lighting. The light changed with the music, and the shadows and patterns seemed as archetypal as the music itself. Nobody had done that on the stage before.

I thought it was extraordinary and wonderful." (Patrick Carnegy to The Guardian) GP at the Met: Wagner's Ring Cycle | Die Walküre: Program Note | Great Performances | PBS GP at the Met: Wagner’s Ring Cycle Die Walküre: Program Note Explore more from this episode More “My Walküre turns out terribly beautiful,” Richard Wagner wrote to his friend, the composer Franz Liszt, on June 16, 1852. “I hope to submit to you the whole poem of the tetralogy before the end of the summer. The music will be easily and quickly done, for it is only the execution of something practically ready.” For neither the first nor the last time in Wagner’s life, things did not work out quite as he had planned. By the end of that year he had, indeed, finished the libretto (or “poem,” as he called it) for his four-part cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen (“The Ring of the Nibelung”), based on stories from ancient Germanic and Norse myths. But the music for Walküre was not finished until December 1854, and it was another year and a half before he finished the orchestration.

The Ring begins with Das Rheingold, a one-act work Wagner called a “Preliminary Evening.” Die Walküre (“First Day of the Festival Play”) is next, followed by Siegfried, then Götterdämmerung. It all started in 1848 when Wagner wrote 11 pages he published as The Nibelung Myth: as Sketch for a Drama. But it was almost 30 years before the first performance of the completed work was given in a theater Wagner had constructed specifically for that purpose in Bayreuth, Germany. His intention was for the Ring to be performed as a whole, rather than broken up into its individual operas. It’s a monumental work in both scope and impact, and it is not going too far to say many people who attend a cycle feel their lives have been changed forever by the experience. Photo: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera Most modern performances of the Ring are spread over a week, as Wagner wished, but since the composer’s own time, theaters have also been presenting the separate parts on their own. Walküre quickly became the most enduringly popular, for a number of reasons.

For one thing, after the gods, goddesses, dwarves, and giants of Rheingold, Walküre introduces human beings into the story of the Ring. It begins with two very sympathetic people, Siegmund and Sieglinde, and the first act is devoted to them falling in love. “The score of the first act of Walküre will soon be ready; it is wonderfully beautiful. I have done nothing like it or approaching it before,” Wagner told Liszt. He was right. The music of Die Walküre builds significantly on Das Rheingold, where he had begun using leitmotifs to construct the music. These short segments of melody, rhythm, or harmony could be associated with a character or a dramatic event, even an emotion or an object. In Walküre, Wagner used them to help suspend time itself while the drama took place, wordlessly, inside the characters. Thanks to Wagner’s brilliant writing for orchestra—something he had to develop even above what he had done in Rheingold—the audience actually experiences for themselves the inner lives of the characters on stage. Photo: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera Just moments into Act I of Die Walküre, Sieglinde offers Siegmund some water.

The stage directions say: “Siegmund (drinks and hands her back the horn. As he signals his thanks with his head, his glance fastens on her features with growing interest.)” To underline these stage directions, Wagner silences the orchestra entirely, except for a single cello. For nine measures this lone cello plays some of the sweetest, most yearning music imaginable, before being joined by the rest of the cellos and two basses for another eight measures. Listeners need not know what labels commentators have attached to the music to experience for themselves the longing in Siegmund’s soul, the love that is even then starting to blossom. The plot of Die Walküre can be summarized in a few dozen words; the outer events are relatively simple. But the inner journey of the characters is uncommonly rich and complex. It’s the difference between flying from New York to California and driving there: You fly because you want to get to your destination as quickly as possible. But if you drive, the journey itself becomes the point. In Walküre, Wagner’s music has a new power that compels us to let him be our guide on the quest he is undertaking.

That’s how he allows us to experience for ourselves the growing love between Siegmund and Sieglinde, to feel the rightness, the naturalness of it. The powerful nature of their love is well established long before they (and we) discover they are brother and sister, so our emotions accept their love, even if our mind—assuming we can wrench it away from Wagner’s music—might have a few questions. In addition to Siegmund and Sieglinde, we meet Brünnhilde, one of the central characters in the Ring. She enters the story in Act II, singing one of the most famous (and one of the shortest) “numbers” in the entire cycle, the battle cry “Hojotoho!” Wagner was extraordinarily careful in noting exactly how this should be sung. The first two syllables (“Ho-jo”) are a single phrase, followed by a sixteenth note (“to”), then the last syllable (“ho”) to be held for five beats, followed by a single beat rest.

This gives the music a quick, bouncy quality that is emphasized later when Wagner asks the soprano to sing the final “ho” on two notes, separated by an octave leap but connected smoothly, ending on high Bs and then high Cs. He also asks her to trill—nonstop—for almost two measures before launching up to a high B and holding it for two measures. If a soprano can sing this incredibly difficult “Hojotoho!” as Wagner intended, the audience cannot help but be charmed by the impetuous, cheeky, rambunctious teenage girl sassing her father, Wotan—to his delight and ours. Her character, and her relationship with Wotan, are firmly established within a couple of minutes. It is also one of the few genuinely joyful moments in Walküre, an opera rather short on happiness.

While in the thick of composing, Wagner lamented to his friend, the Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein, “I find the subject of Die Walküre too painful by far: there’s really not one of the world’s sorrows that the work does not express, and in the most painful form; playing artistic games with that pain is taking its revenge on me: it has made me really ill several times already, so that I have had to stop completely.” Photo: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera Another reason for the popularity of Walküre is that we are likely to find ourselves mirrored in it—if not in the new love enjoyed by Sieglinde and Siegmund in Act I, then by the dilemma facing Wotan in Act II, as he realizes that all of his careful planning is for naught and that, despite his best efforts, his life has taken a terrible turn, leaving him no way out. The scene in which Wotan wrestles with this crisis caused Wagner no end of trouble, and he agonized over whether or not people would grasp what Wotan is going through. “For the development of the great tetralogy, this is the most important scene of all,” he insisted.

Wotan’s anguish continues, with a new focus, in the final act. Its ending is one of the most extraordinary in all of opera, with a sense of loss, grief, abandonment, and yet overwhelming love as Wotan is forced to let go of the most precious thing in the world to him, Brünnhilde. It seems like a bitter defeat: his cherished son Siegmund is dead. His favorite child, Brünnhilde, is banished forever. His plans—to create a hero who would be able to win back the ring and return it to the Rhinemaidens and thus save the gods—have crumbled to nothingness. He has nowhere to turn. Photo: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera Photo: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera And yet it is because of these apparent failures that Siegfried (in the next opera) turns out to be the very hero the gods need. This glimmer of hope, in the middle of such overwhelming sorrow, is surely another reason why Die Walküre is such a beloved opera. Bavaria’s King Ludwig II was not willing to wait until Wagner had completed the entire Ring before experiencing Die Walküre in the theater.

Against Wagner’s wishes, the opera was given for the first time on June 26, 1870, in Munich, nine months after the premiere of Das Rheingold. Wagner refused to be involved in any way, and he asked his friends not to attend. The famous violinist Joseph Joachim was there. So were Brahms and Saint-Saëns. Despite his friendship with Wagner, Liszt went and sobbed through part of the opera. Even newspapers usually critical of Wagner pronounced Die Walküre an extraordinary work of art. The fact that opera houses continue to devote considerable time and resources to presenting Die Walküre in new ways proves that Liszt did not exaggerate in his assessment when he wrote to Wagner, “Your Walküre [score] has arrived, and I should like to reply to you by your Lohengrin chorus, sung by 1,000 voices, and repeated a thousandfold: ‘A wonder! A wonder!’” —Paul Thomason Courtesy of The Metropolitan Opera.

More from GP at the Met: Wagner’s Ring Cycle (10) Wagner - Das Rheingold - Classic FM Wagner - Das Rheingold By Mel Spencer Richard Wagner completed the first opera in the Ring Cycle in 1854 - after he had written the final three. It's often said Wagner composed his Ring Cycle backwards, and it's not untrue - although Das Rheingold is the first in the sequence of his four epic dramas (ahead of Die Walküre, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung ), it was conceived at the end of the composition process as a 'great prelude' to a gargantuan trilogy. Considerably shorter than its three successors, the curtain rises showing three Rhine maidens at the bottom of the river, as a dwarf from Nibelung attempts to woo them. The three maidens, Woglinde, Wellgunde, and Flosshilde, share the story of a magical ring which grants the bearer the power to rule the world. The drama follows the dwarf, Alberich, who steals the ring and lays a curse on it when it is taken from him - resulting in fantastically operatic deaths and betrayals throughout the Cycle.

Das Rheingold was first performed at Munich on 22 September 1869, but the opera wasn't performed as Wagner intended it - as part of a typically Wagnerian large-scale production of all four operas in the cycle over four nights - until 13 August 1876. Ride of the Valkyries – Wagner | The Ring Cycle You are here: Home / Ring Cycle Videos / Ride of the Valkyries – Wagner Ride of the Valkyries – Wagner October 27, 2011 by 3 Comments The Ride of the Valkyries is the popular term for the beginning of Act III of Die Walküre, the second of the four operas by Richard Wagner that comprise Der Ring des Nibelungen. The main theme of the Ride, the leitmotif labelled Walkürenritt, was first written down by the composer on 23 July 1851. The preliminary draft for the Ride was composed in 1854 as part of the composition of the entire opera, which was fully orchestrated by the end of the first quarter of 1856.

Together with the Bridal Chorus from Lohengrin, the Ride of the Valkyries is one of Wagners best-known pieces. In the opera house, the Ride, which takes around eight minutes, begins in the prelude to the Act, building up successive layers of accompaniment until the curtain rises to reveal a mountain peak where four of the eight Valkyrie sisters of Brünnhilde have gathered in preparation for the transportation of fallen heroes to Valhalla. As they are joined by the other four, the familiar tune is carried by the orchestra, while, above it, the Valkyries greet each other and sing their battle-cry. Apart from the song of the Rhinemaidens in Das Rheingold, it is the only ensemble piece in the first three operas of Wagners Ring cycle. Outside the opera house, it is usually heard in a purely instrumental version, which may be as short as three minutes.

If you cannot find something on this page, Search Google Search for: GP at the Met: Wagner's Ring Cycle | Götterdämmerung: Program Note | Great Performances | PBS Explore more from this episode More “The most astounding fact in all Wagner’s career was probably the writing of the text of Siegfried’s Death in 1848,” says Ernest Newman in Wagner as Man and Artist. “We can only stand amazed at the audacity of the conception, the imaginative power the work displays, the artistic growth it reveals since Lohengrin was written, and the total breach it indicates with the whole of the operatic art of his time. But Siegfried’s Death was impossible in the musical idiom of Lohengrin; and Wagner must have known this intuitively.” Even so, it is unlikely that in November of 1848 Wagner understood that his new opera would not be completed for decades, or that it would—under the title Götterdämmerung—be the culmination of one of the greatest masterpieces in all of Western civilization, Der Ring des Nibelungen. Earlier that year Wagner had finished orchestrating Lohengrin.

He was becoming increasingly active in the political turmoil sweeping Dresden (as well as much of Europe). He also made sketches for operas based on the lives of Friedrich Barbarossa and Jesus of Nazareth. That summer he had written the essay “The Wibelungen: World-history from the Saga,” and later he would write “The Nibelung Myth: As Sketch for a Drama.” But there is no indication that at this time Wagner was actively planning on mining the Nibelung saga for more than Siegfried’s Death. Photo: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera In May of 1849 the uprisings in Dresden were put down. Wanted by the police for his political activity, Wagner fled, eventually settling in Switzerland. He produced a number of prose works over the next few years, including the important Opera and Drama, written during the winter of 1850–51, and planned an opera called Wieland the Smith. In 1850 he also revisited his libretto for Siegfried’s Death, making some musical sketches.

The more Wagner thought about it, the more he realized that for the story of the hero’s end to be truly understood by the audience, they needed to know more about what had gone before. So in 1851 he wrote the libretto to Young Siegfried, which was then followed (in reverse order) by Die Walküre and Das Rheingold, spelling out in greater detail why the events of Siegfried’s Death occurred. It was not until October of 1869—after composing the music for the first three works in the Ring, as well as Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg—that Wagner again took up the task of creating the music of the drama now known as Götterdämmerung. The name change reflected a significant shift in the opera itself, from the death of its hero to the downfall of the gods themselves. In the earliest version of the story, Brünnhilde took the body of Siegfried to Valhalla, where his death redeemed the gods.

Before igniting Siegfried’s funeral pyre, she announced, “Hear then, ye mighty Gods; your wrong-doing is annulled; thank him, the hero who took your guilt upon him… One only shall rule, All-Father, Glorious One, Thou [Wotan]. This man [Siegfried] I bring you as pledge of thy eternal might: good welcome give him, as is his desert!” Photo: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera There has been much speculation about why Wagner changed the ending of the Ring from this optimistic one, in which Wotan and the gods continued to rule, to the ending we know today, in which the gods perish. Sometimes this shift is attributed to Wagner’s discovery of Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation, but that did not occur until the end of 1854, at which point Wagner had completed the text for the Ring.

Wagner’s optimism about a new social order for Europe began crumbling as the revolts of 1848 and 1849 were crushed, and by the time he began making a prose sketch for Young Siegfried in May of 1851, he noted: “Guilt of the Gods, and their necessary downfall. Siegfried’s mission. Self-annihilation of the Gods.” Wagner’s Dresden friend August Röckel, who had only read the libretto of the Ring, asked the composer a question that has puzzled audiences at Götterdämmerung from the beginning: “Why, seeing that the gold is returned to the Rhine, is it necessary for the gods to perish?” “I believe that, at a good performance, even the most naïve spectator will be left in no doubt on this point,” Wagner replied. “It must be said, however, that the gods’ downfall is not the result of points in a contract… No, the necessity of this downfall arises from our innermost feelings.

Thus it was important to justify this sense of necessity emotionally… I have once again realized how much of the work’s meaning (given the nature of my poetic intent) is only made clear by the music. I can now no longer bear to look at the poem [the libretto] without music.” Or, as he put it in a letter to Franz Liszt, “The thing shall sound [the italics are Wagner’s] in such a fashion that people shall hear what they cannot see.” Photo: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera Thomas Mann brilliantly summed up the relationship between Wagner’s words and music in the speech he gave on the 50th anniversary of the composer’s death: “The texts around which it [the music] is woven, which it thereby makes into drama, are not literature—but the music is.

It seems to shoot up like a geyser from the pre-civilized bedrock depths of myth (and not only ‘seems’; it really does); but in fact—and at the same time—it is carefully considered, calculated, supremely intelligent, full of shrewdness and cunning, and as literary in its conception as the texts are musical in theirs.” Which is why Wagner knew he could not compose the music of Götterdämmerung until he had achieved absolute mastery of his compositional technique, which, he explained to Röckel, had “become a close-knit unity: there is scarcely a bar in the orchestra that does not develop out of the preceding unit.” As he composed the Ring, Wagner greatly expanded his use of leitmotifs—bits of melody, harmony, rhythm, even tonality—far beyond merely representing a character or an object. They became infinitely malleable, and Wagner put them together in ways that became not only increasingly subtle, but also superbly expressive, adding layers of drama and emotion to the events taking place on stage. Even if listeners have no knowledge of the leitmotifs, Wagner’s music is still enormously potent and can be a life-changing experience.

“Music drama should be about the insides of the characters,” Wagner said. “The object of music drama is the presentation of archetypal situations as experienced by the participants [Wagner’s italics], and to this dramatic end music is a means, albeit a uniquely expressive one.” At first glance, after the uninterrupted flow of drama in the three preceding parts of the Ring, the libretto of Götterdämmerung might seem a throwback. It has recognizable, easily excerptable arias, a marvelous love duet, a thrilling swearing- of-blood-brotherhood duet, a chilling vengeance trio, and rousing choruses. But when Wagner finally began to compose the music for Götterdämmerung he did not rewrite the libretto, other than to make some changes in the wording of the final scene. He knew the libretto worked exactly as it should, providing him with precisely the words and dramatic situations he needed to write some of the greatest orchestral music ever conceived. And it is through the music that Wagner can make dramatic points much more vividly than could be made through words.

Photo: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera One of the most shattering parts of Götterdämmerung is Siegfried’s Funeral Music. Even played in the concert hall, shorn of the rest of the opera, it makes a tremendous effect. In its proper place during a performance of the full drama, it is overwhelming. A bit of insight into why this is so comes from the diary of Wagner’s second wife, Cosima. The entry for September 29, 1871 reads: “‘I have composed a Greek chorus,’ R[ichard] exclaims to me in the morning, ‘but a chorus which will be sung, so to speak, by the orchestra; after Siegfried’s death, while the scene is being changed, the Siegmund theme will be played, as if the chorus were saying: “This was his father”; then the sword motive; and finally his own theme; then the curtain goes up and Gutrune enters, thinking she had heard his horn.

How could words ever make the impression that these solemn themes, in their new form, will evoke?’” Cosima does not mention the concept of a Greek chorus in connection with the Immolation Scene or the great orchestral outpouring that follows Brünnhilde’s words. But it is impossible not to think of these moments as a magnificent musical threnody for everything that has gone before. Such a profound summing up of complex lives, situations, and emotions must be expressed by the orchestra, because mere words could not do them justice or provide the catharsis that allows for a true transformation and a new beginning—all of which Wagner’s music does, perfectly, at the end of Götterdämmerung. Several years after the Ring had been given at Bayreuth in 1876, Cosima noted in her diary: “In the evening, before supper, [Richard]…glances through the conclusion of Götterdämmerung, and says that never again will he write anything as complicated as that.” For many Wagnerians, he never wrote anything better. —Paul Thomason Courtesy of The Metropolitan Opera. More from GP at the Met: Wagner’s Ring Cycle (10)

Question: Which 1854 opera was the first in Wagner's Ring Cycle?
Answer: Das Rheingold