詹姆斯·莱文《瓦格纳-莱茵的黄金》大都会歌剧院2010(Hi-Res)[中...

In the eye of the Ring

Rheingold

In the beginning were four elements, air, earth, water and fire. Air is personified by Wotan, the supreme god in Nordic mythology. Wotan is a thinking type inclined to intellectual speculation. Never satisfied, he seeks the high ground. He reasons. He beats the air. He represents thought.

Earth is Erda. The goddess seems to be permanently asleep. Her premonitorydreams are acted out through her three daughters, the Norns. They spin the ominous thread of individual fate. The first recalls the past. The second lives out the present. The youngest hastens the future. Erda represents intuition. 

Sentiment is often associated with water, the vehicle of tears, of blood. Water is here represented by the Rhine, mythical river, source of all life, which symbolizes evolution and nature. Like mother Earth, father Rhine has three daughters. They are the Sirens of Greek myth. They bewitchand enthrall the men who fall for their illusions.

Fire is ambivalent. It is at the same time destructive and life-giving, consuming and purifying. It is represented by Loge, a character as engaging and elusive as flame itself.

The fire, which runs through a lover’s veins and devours him, is Loge. The irresistible impulse which puts an end to all reasoning, that also is Loge. He encourages immediate irresistible enjoyment.

The world is represented by a gigantic ash tree. The ash bores its roots into the earth and thrusts its growing branches into the sky. The intertwined fibers of its trunk are similar to the Norn’s threads. It links the past and its roots to the future. At the foot of this tree of life, a spring wells upwatering it and murmuring spells. It is the spring of knowledge. The tree is an intermediary in contact with the four elements.

Time is ordained like the sequence of seasons and the thread of destiny. It is no accident that the Norns spin it at the foot of the tree.

The world is populated. Above, Wotan reigns and sets about creating the race of the gods. On Earth two giants, who symbolize two aspects of mankind. Fasolt is poetic mankind, a simple good fellow, idealistic. Fafner represents the clamorousmasses jealous, suspicious, destructive and selfish.

In the depths of the earth are the dwarfs. They are the Nebelungs, industrious workers. They excavate to extract metals, steel for swords or gold for ornaments. Happy as the Seven Dwarfs, they produce by hard work. One strong individual stands out from their masses. Alberich, a sensual creature motivated by potent sexual appetite.

This rounds off our universe. How long will it stay as it is? No one knows. And one day the balance is disturbed leading step by step to the great adventure of the Ring.

Rhine gold

Wotan the intellectual is sated. He looks for a substitute for sensuality which no longer holds any attraction. He goes to the ash tree and drinks from the spring water. He thereby obtains scientific and technical insight knowledge and reason. He has to pay for this through the loss of his left eye the one that sees within. 

He takes as his wife Fricka, the guardian of home, legitimacy and convention. But Fricka is argumentative and coquettish. Athinking and sensing type, she lacks feeling and intuition. The quality is lost with Wotan’s left eye. Fricka is the guardian of home and of law.

Fricka has a sister Freia who is the incarnation of beauty as is her twin brother Froh. Freia grows golden apples. Every morning the gods eat from them which preserve their eternal youth. These are the apples of the Hesperides in Greek mythology. With rational understanding Wotan takes cognizance of maritallegitimacy, beauty and youth. There remains violence. It is personified by the god of thunder Donner who wields his storm hammer.

Wotan breaks off a branch from the tree of life. He shapes it into a spear. He carves on its shaft the secrets of this knowledge, the runes or Nordic hieroglyphs.

The runes are the statutes and decree which form the law, his law. They secure his authority. They bind him as the Constitution binds the president of a democracy.

Consequences of these two transgressions: the contaminated water ceases to sing as the spring dries up. The tree perishes from its wound. Time stops flowing. Soon the thread of destiny will break. It is the beginning of universal pollutin.

Never satisfied, Wotan draws in Loge who is sudden, thoughtless impulse. Loge advises him to have a fortress built by the Giants. Fricka aids and abets as a home may tie Wotan close to her. The Giants ask for wages. Loge promises Wotan to find a way of paying them. When the fortress is built, they will see.

But Fasolt, the reaming giant and Fafner, the calculating giant demand a pledge. Freia is mortgaged. One of them covets her for her beauty, the other because of the golden apples. Depriving the gods of them guarantees power.

Led on by Loge Wotan signs the contract. Loge will find a way to redeem the pledge. He only has to look carefully.

The Giants set to work. Wotan dreams of his fortress. Fricka has nightmares. Dawn is near.

It all begins with a note, the E-flat whose harmonies lead into the theme ofevolution, the Rhine, the waves, the Rhine maidens.

All the other leitmotif will be born in the same way.

The dwarf Alberich has emerged from the depths in search of sex of love just when Wotan has tired of them. He makes advances to three Rhine maidens who jolly working him up, playing with him and making him cruelly aware of his physical ugliness. He tries in vain to pursue them and threatens them with his fist in his impotent fury. He becomes more frustrated with feelings of rejection and inferiority.

Then by the glimmering of dawn, he notices the Rhine gold shining in the waves. The Rhine maidens unwisely give away the secret: anyone who renounces love and steals the gold will be able to forge it into a magic ring. Runes are inscribed in this rubescent gold ring which are as hard to read as those carved on the spear are easy. Nevertheless they secure unlimited wealth for its owner.

Confusing love and lust, the Rhine maidens think they have nothing to fear from Alberich: hungry for sex, he will surely never renounce love. Alberich curses love and carries off the Rhine gold. He will forge the ring. He will buy pleasure with his wealth.

Before the audience’s stupefied eyes the scene shifts from the depths to the peaks of a high mountain range overlooking the Rhine Valley. On the other side of the valley stands the airy castle, completed the symbol of Wotan’s power.

During this time the ring motif transforms itself into that of the castle. Both emanate from the violation of nature, the renunciation of love for the benefit of power.

“It is not”, read Richard Wagner, “the rejection suffered by Alberich at the hands of the Rhine maidens that is the source of this misfortune. Alberich and his ring could not bring ill to the gods unless this was not previously an accessible evil.”

The giants accept the Rheingold in payment instead of Freia. In order to redeem this pledge Wotan is obliged toseize Alberich’s ring. Loge justifies this:“stealing from a thief is not stealing.” The sophism that entirely suits Wotan.

While they wait, the giants have gone off with Freia. They will come back at the end of the day by which time Wotan will have to have the gold with him.

Whilst Wotan descends into the center of the earth, the sadness of Freia’s theme transforms itself in its turn into that of hard labor, the anvils.

Sexual frustration has made Alberich hungry for possessions and for the accumulation of wealth for its own sake but also sadistic and paranoiac in his behavior. It represented for Wagner the abstract funds of stock exchange speculators. Alberich is oppressing the dwarfs with pathological violence.

Fraud would later associate the ring, sphincter with the setal anal complex linking it with avarice and the holding of goods. Coincidence?

Alberich has entrusted his crafty and cowardly brother Mime with the task of making a talisman, the Tarnhelm. This talisman makes its wearer invisible, ubiquitous and able to transform himself at will, a miracle which can produce unlimited wealth.

Mime knows how to make the Tarnhelm without understanding its power. He will be the first victim of Alberich becoming invisible. In order to lay hands on the ring, Loge plays on the vanity of the dwarf who when challenged changes himself into a dragon and then into a toad. It’s the story of Puss in Boots.

Pinned down and conquered, Alberich has to give up on by one, the hoard of treasure, the Tarnhelm, the ring. Having lost both love and wealth, Alberich curses the fateful ring: everyone else who possesses the ring will also have to renounce love and will finally be struck down by one who is consumed with envy and prepared to do anything to possess it.

The curse on the ring will be the driving force for a series of violent deaths before the ring ends its deadly career in the Rhine from whence it came.

The Giants return and Freia is covered in gold until she disappears. Wotan has to relinquish to the Giants the hoard of treasure, the magic helmet, the Tarnhelm, and the ring.

At first, he hesitates to part with the ring, but Erda emerges from the earth and makes up his mind. The talisman bears a curse. He must part with it.

Wotan is facing the twilight of the gods.

In actual fact, as soon as the Giants have been paid, one of them seizes the ring on Loge’s advice. He is immediately killed by his brother who seizes the ring. The clamorous Fafner changes into a dragon and retires to a cave where he jealously sits on his hoard. The curse is working.

Wotan is terrified. A storm symbolizes Wotan’s state of mind.

A rainbow conveys the gods into the castle Valhalla. The gods go in, laughing while the Rhine maidens bewail their lost god. And Lgoe dreams of changing back into flame and comsuming it all.