The establishment of a festival theatre where, humanly speaking, ideal
performances of all the great operas could be given--this was long a
dream of Wagner's. He knew what could be done and how to do it; he knew
also that it was not done because managers, conductors, bandsmen and
singers had formed careless and slovenly habits, and were blinded by
prejudices and traditions surviving from the days of old Italian opera.
King Ludwig helped him as far as he could, the good burghers of Bayreuth
were ready to give him a site, societies were formed to rake in money;
and after apparently interminable preliminary difficulties had been
overcome, the business of building the house was begun. It stands high
on a hill, away from the centre of Bayreuth--a great structure of red
brick and timber, not an imposing piece of architecture by any means,
yet not unpleasing to the eye. Inside every seat is arranged so to
afford a perfect view of the stage, and the orchestra is in a pit, so as
to be unseen, although the singers, wherever they may be placed, can see
the conductor. The improvements Wagner made on the stage have
themselves been improved on, and in this respect Bayreuth is no better
than many other theatres. At the beginning Wagner secured every possible
appliance, and then set to work to teach his men how to use them. And it
was just in this that he reformed the opera-house: he insisted on
everything being done artistically and with the utmost care. Nothing had
to be slurred over; every detail had to be carried out as
conscientiously as if the fate of empires depended on it. The idea was
novel in operatic circles. It aroused opposition; but in the end Wagner
got his way, and what was at first declared impossible, then difficult,
is now done as a matter of course in all the serious opera-houses. It is
in this very matter that Bayreuth has now fallen far behind other German
towns, and can no longer be regarded as a serious art centre. In another
respect it has departed from the original intention. That was to give
model representations of all the fine operas, with the best artists
obtainable. But, under the rule of the Wagner family, only Wagner's
works are played; while as for the artists, Mr. Siegfried
Wagner--Richard's son--often directs, although he is an inferior
conductor, and petty intrigues are allowed to prevent some of the
greatest singers singing there. Wagner's idea was magnificent, but it
needs a Wagner to execute it. However, Bayreuth has done a great
service, and now what becomes of it matters to no one.
Bayreuth was opened with performances of the _Ring_, that enormous
music-drama which consists of three huge music-dramas and a shorter one.
Now, it was the _Ring_ more than any other of Wagner's works which led
to him being misunderstood, and afforded opportunities for
misrepresentation. When the libretto was published, long before the
music was written, it was called a monstrosity, and one professor
implored Wagner not to set it. At first sight it seems so hopelessly
involved and intricate, the main dramatic idea works its way so
sinuously through such a maze of subsidiary ideas, that intellectually
honest and intelligent people can hardly be blamed if they are unable to
see at a glance what it is all about. Yet the plot is not more
complicated than that of many a novel, and the real trouble is that we
won't take the pains over it that we do over a novel, or, perhaps, do
not apply our intelligence in the best way. At this time of day no one,
I hope, will condemn a work of art because it cannot be grasped in a
glance.
There are four music-dramas, or operas (I use the terms
indiscriminately, now that there is no danger of the Wagnerian opera
being confused with the older forms). Wagner made each self-contained,
complete and comprehensible by itself, and yet he carried the main
action on from one to the next until the final catastrophe; but he did
this at the cost of much repetition, whence another charge brought
against the work--that of its interminable tedium. I will therefore
first disentangle the main idea, which is simple. Let it be granted that
Wotan is ruler of the world--not a first cause, but a god, limited in
his powers, conditioned, ruling only so long as he obeys the laws
inscribed in Runic characters on his spear. How he arrived in this
position we do not know, any more than we know the origin of the Greek
gods; indeed, in this respect and others there are parallels between the
Greek and the Northern mythology. Wotan goes in fear lest the powers of
the nether world usurp his domination, which he wants to make absolute.
He makes a pact with the giants--the Titan forces of the earth--that be
will give them Freia if they build him a castle, Valhalla, which he
intends to fill with slain warriors in sufficient numbers to keep down
his foes. This is his primary, essential, fatal blunder; for unless the
gods eat of Freia's apples every day they must wither and their powers
decay. But Wotan means to cheat the giants, and Loge, the deceitful god
of fire, who is ultimately to destroy the whole of the present régime,
has been sent off to find a means of doing it. It is when so much has
been accomplished that Wagner raises the curtain on the first scene of
the first drama. _The Rhinegold_ is entirely devoted to an exposition of
the main drama.
The gold lies in the Rhine. The Rhine maidens play about it. It is only
a pretty plaything for them. The Nibelung comes and steals it.
Meanwhile, far above, Wotan and his wife Fricka awake and find Valhalla
built, and now Wotan has to pay the giants. They arrive; Loge has not
arrived. Loge does arrive and makes his excuses--no man will give up a
beautiful woman, for no matter what sum. But he tells of the Rhinegold,
and the giants agree to accept it in lieu of Freia. Wotan and Loge go
off and get it by a trick. But Alberick has shaped part of it into a
magic ring, which gives its possessor absolute power over the whole
world. When they come back to conclude the bargain with the giants, it
is found necessary that Wotan should give up the ring also. He does so,
after resolving on his grand idea, which will appear presently; and the
gods enter Valhalla while the Rhine maidens below are heard bewailing
the loss of their plaything.
The ring is cursed, and no sooner do the giants begin to share their
treasure than they fall to disputing about it. Fafner kills his brother,
and making off with all, buries it in a cave--"Hate Hole"--and changing
himself into a dragon, by virtue of the Tarnhelm which is amongst the
treasure, he settles down to guard it. At any moment now Wotan's empire
may be taken from him; the ring he must gain somehow, but by the laws
written on his staff he may not perpetrate such an act of injustice as
taking it himself. His position is more tragic than he knows. His
brilliant idea is the sword, and here is its theme, one of the most
important in the work:
[Illustration: Some bars of music]
He will raise up a breed of heroes, let them fend for themselves in the
world--even heap pains and trials upon them; and in the end a fearless
hero will arise, find this sword, and of his own absolute free-will slay
the dragon and take the ring. He is trying to jump out of his own
shadow, as we see immediately in _The Valkyrie_. Siegmund, his son, the
hero, takes the sword, and then commits adultery and incest with
Sieglinda, his sister, the wife of Hunding. Fricka, the punisher of
matrimonial crimes, compels Wotan to let Hunding slay Siegmund. This is
done, though Brunnhilde, the incarnation of love, tries to save the
hero. She has to be punished--the laws that bind Wotan are
inexorable--and he has to put away love; in order to rule, love must
have no place in his thoughts nor influence his actions. Brunnhilde is
put to sleep, and a hedge of fire set blazing round her. There she must
sleep until a hero arrives who has no fear of Wotan or his spear, and
will pass through the fire and take her for bride.
The hero is the son of Sieglinda and Siegmund; he kills the dragon,
takes the ring, shatters Wotan's spear, passes the fiery hedge, and weds
Brunnhilde. The details we shall examine when we deal with the drama of
_Siegfried_. Wotan's part is now ended; he retires to Valhalla to await
the inevitable dénouement. He willingly abdicates, and wills his own
destruction and the destruction of Valhalla and all that existed under
his rule. If power involves the compulsion to renounce himself, to
destroy all that he loves and all that makes life sweet, then he rather
renounces life. So he awaits during the _Dusk of the Gods_, until
Siegfried has been slain and the ring restored to the Rhine. His own
power being broken, and the power that lay in the ring being again in
the hands of the innocent Rhine-maidens, there is nothing to control
Loge, who blazes up in sheets of fire, and Valhalla is consumed, while
the Rhine maidens swim joyfully about in the bubbling, roaring Rhine.
I have tried to trace as clearly as possible this main story as it
pursues its course through the tangle of subsidiary stories. In dealing
with a drama so richly stored with material, where every rift is loaded
with ore, much has necessarily to be left untouched; in such a sketch as
this one cannot do more than indicate the broad masses. There is no
philosophic idea, no exposition of a philosophy. Wagner was no
philosopher, though he found in Schopenhauer's Will to Live, and its
Renunciation, material which he could use for poetic and dramatic
purposes. The "lessons" which many ingenious persons find here are not
lessons at all, but the ground-facts on which the drama is based. That
the power of gold--signified by the ring--carries with it the curse of
gold is not a thing to be inferred from the drama; it is assumed as the
starting-point of the drama. That a man cannot by many subterfuges hold
power in this world without incidentally committing acts which revolt
the better part of his nature--this, again, is no lesson, but a fact
taken for granted. I will not waste space on the thousand odd
"meanings," "lessons" and so on found by the enthusiastic in Wagner. His
ideas were at once the substance and the inspiration of his
music-dramas; but he never dreamed of writing copybook headings. He had
in language to make his characters talk about these ideas for two
reasons, each sufficient in itself. First, excepting in melodrama and
rough-and-tumble farces, the audience must know the motives actuating
the personages of the drama--their situation, their emotions, ambitions,
fears and what not. Without that all drama would be an incomprehensible
jabbering and gesticulating of mummers, fit only to be put on the London
stage at the present moment. Second, if Wagner spread himself in the
expression of certain things where an ordinary dramatist would have
dealt with them more briefly, it must be remembered that he was writing
words to set to music. An animadversion on the length of the speeches
would be perfectly just if the drama were meant to be spoken; as the
drama is meant to be sung, it is irrelevant and silly. Now, it is idle
to say, in answer to all this, that Wagner proves the truth of his
premisses by the deductions he draws in the drama, as in Euclid a
proposition is stated to be a truth and then proved to be a truth. In
Wagner nothing is proved. Accept his premisses, and you understand the
subsequent drama; wait for the premisses to be proved true, and there is
no drama for you to understand--no drama, but a series of incoherent,
unrelated and inconsequent incidents. Finally, we all know that when a
man tumbles over a high precipice he is killed. Suppose that in a
melodrama the villain tumbled and is killed. Would some wise
commentator write, "The master here proves the wickedness of villainy,
and shows conclusively how it always meets with its just punishment, for
the villain tumbles over a precipice and is, if we mistake not, killed.
It is true the same fate unfortunately overtakes the hero, but the
circumstances and the moral are different. The villain met his just
reward; an unlucky accident befell the hero. Underlying this is the
profounder truth that when men--and we will even say women--fall off
high places, they get killed or seriously hurt"? This is on a par with
the "truths" and "morals" found in the _Ring_.
Throughout the _Ring_ Wagner fairly let himself go in the matter of
gorgeous, riotous colour in depicting Nature--the earth, the waters,
clouds, and the working of the elements. He had ampler opportunities
than any of his previous works afforded. He had not, as before, to place
his characters in a scene, to arrange a background for them. Many of the
characters are the elements typified--the water-nymphs, the giants,
Donner, Loge, Erda. Wotan himself rides on the tempest, surrounded with
fearful lightnings; the Valkyrie maidens ride through the air on
supernatural horses amidst thunder and wind and rain. The whole action
takes place in the open air, or in the bowels of the earth, or the
depths of the Rhine; mountain and storm-lashed woods, dismal caverns and
chasms, the broad river, are always before us. Two scenes take place
under a man-made roof: in the first act of _The Valkyrie_ we have
Hunding's rough hut, built round an ash-tree, which penetrates the top,
and its branches sway and dash together above the actors' heads; in the
_Dusk of the Gods_ there is Gunther's hall, completely open on one side.
Undefiled Nature, healthy and wild and sweet, is always present, and
always in sympathy with the character of every scene. Besides being
magically picturesque, the music is also continuously in a high degree
dramatic, and it has yet another quality: it is charged with a sense of
a strange, remote past--a past that never existed. No archaic chords or
progressions occur, but by a series of miraculous touches the atmosphere
of a far-away past is kept before us. To save coming back to this again,
I will mention such instances as the Rhine-maidens' wail, heard far down
in the valley as the gods march triumphantly to Valhalla; the passage in
which Siegmund recounts how on coming home one day he found the house in
ashes, his sister and father gone, and only a wolf-skin lying on the
ground; the Fate theme, and the haunting song of the Rhine-maidens in
the last act of the _Dusk of the Gods_.
Now, though one would regret the loss of some of the music I have
mentioned, the _Rhinegold_ is tedious, long in proportion to the
significance--musical and dramatic--of its content, and on the whole a
bore. I never go to see it. The Fricka music in the second scene is as
effective on the piano as in the theatre, and the last scene is as
effective on a concert orchestra as in the theatre; in fact, in the
theatre the device of a pasteboard rainbow, coloured to suit German
taste, detracts from the effect. Only a fool would dare to say that
Wagner should have done this, that or the other; but I venture to say
that if he had not suffered from that very German malady, a desire to
work back to the beginning of things, and to embody the result in his
art, Wagner would have found a better means than a two-hour long
"fore-evening" to prepare for the real drama of the _Ring_.
That drama opens in earnest with _The Valkyrie_--the story of how, in
pursuing his ambitious plan, Wotan is forced to sacrifice first his own
son, then his daughter Brunnhilde, who is the incarnation of all that is
sweet and beautiful in his own nature. She shares, it is true, his
curiously limited immortality--an immortality that may be, and finally
is, curtailed--but she can suffer a punishment worse to her than
extinction. The prelude opens with the roar and hoarse scream of the
storm as it dashes through the forest--- the plash of the rain, the
flashing of lightning and the roll of the thunder. The musical idea was
obviously suggested by Schubert's "Erl-king." In each we have the same
rapidly-reiterated notes in the upper part, and Wagner's bars are simply
a variant of Schubert's. The curtain rises on Hunding's hut; the door is
burst open, and Siegmund tumbles in exhausted, and falls before the
fire. Sieglinda gives him mead, and one sees it is a case of love at
first sight. Hunding enters, and, finding Siegmund to be an enemy of
his, gives him until morning, and tells him that then he must fight.
Sieglinda drugs her husband's night-draught, and, while he is sleeping,
tells Siegmund of how, when she was abducted, and compelled against her
will to marry Hunding, a gray-bearded stranger came in, with his hat
drawn over one eye--Wotan had but one eye--and wearing a dark-blue cloak
marked with stars, suggested by the deep-blue star-pierced sky by night.
He drove a sword into the ash trunk, and, declaring that only a man
strong enough to draw it out should wield it, went his way. Many have
tried, and none succeeded. Siegmund at once draws it, and the pair fly.
There has been some of Wagner's finest and freshest love-music, and one
entrancing effect is got when a puff of wind suddenly blows the door
open. The storm has ceased, and there we see the forest bathed in a
spring moonlight, the raindrops on the young leaves dancing and
gleaming. It is at this moment Siegmund sings the wonderful spring song.
In the next act Wotan tells Brunnhilda she must protect Siegmund in the
coming fight; but Fricka seeks him out in this rocky place amongst the
hills, and compels him to promise on oath that Siegmund shall die to
atone for his violation of the sacred rite of marriage. Brunnhilda
reenters, and then occurs a scene which has caused much debate. At
enormous length Wotan recounts to her practically all we have already
seen and heard before. It may be, as I have said, that Wagner wanted to
make each opera comprehensible in itself, without reference to the
others; it may be that his artistic sense forced him to make it clearer
and ever clearer that each tragedy as it happens is Wotan's tragedy;
but, in any case, I, for one, never regret when the scene is somewhat
shorn. Wotan is defeated in this attempt to observe the word of the law,
but break the spirit. He cannot wield the sword himself, but he made it
and placed it where and so that the hero alone could take it. The hero
is of the seed of his loins, and the fact that Wotan has made life
bitter for him counts for nothing against that fact; and, finally,
though he could not himself aid Siegmund, he ordered his daughter to do
so. He wished Siegmund to act of his own free-will, and yet to do what
he, Wotan, wanted. Checked by Fricka, he revokes his command to
Brunnhilda, and goes off cursing fate. Siegmund and Sieglinda enter,
flying before Hunding; Sieglinda faints, and at last sleeps; and then
Brunnhilda steps forward from among the rocks in the gloomy
half-light--a stern, imposing, indeed an awful, figure, the herald of
death, seen only by warriors about to die. The Fate theme sounds from
the orchestra, and another melody, out of which nearly the whole scene
is woven, is heard, and then, to a simple chord--supernatural, ghostly
in its effect--she calls Siegmund. She tells him he is to die and go
with her to Valhalla. He pleads in vain; she (simply, be it remembered,
a part of her father's will) cannot understand why he should refuse to
go where his father and so many famous warriors have already gone. "So
young and fair, and yet so cold and stern!" Siegmund exclaims; and at
last he asks whether Sieglinda will also be there. "Siegmund will see
Sieglinda no more," she replies to a quiet phrase of unspeakable pathos.
Then Siegmund refuses to go with her, and he draws his sword to slay
first Sieglinda, then himself. Brunnhilda is overwhelmed by the
revelation of a love so devoted, and at last promises to help him. It is
her own nature as is revealed to her. Night and storm come on; Hunding's
horn is heard as he comes nearer and nearer; Siegmund mounts amongst the
rocks to meet him; a flash of lightning reveals them in the act of
fighting; Brunnhilda hovers above to strike for him, when Wotan appears
in a fiery glare and smashes Siegmund's sword, so that Hunding's spear
passes through him. Sieglinda has awakened to see this and collapses;
Brunnhilda rapidly descends, and, gathering the fragments of the
shattered sword, hurries Sieglinda off to seek shelter from Wotan's
wrath. Wotan kills Hunding with a contemptuous gesture, telling him to
say to Fricka that her will has been accomplished. He rests there for a
moment, then goes off in flaming wrath. The tragedy has gone a step
onward; he has killed his son, and now must punish Brunnhilda--put away
love from himself to the end that he may enjoy a loveless empire.
The music throughout the act is amongst Wagner's noblest and most
beautiful and dramatic. Every phrase given to Fricka proclaims her
queenly and overbearing, with right and power on her side, and
relentless determination to use them. Then there is the Valkyries'
war-whoop--well known from its use in the Valkyries' Ride. Sieglinda has
tender, piteous cries. In the scene of pleading and counter-pleading
between Siegmund and Brunnhilda we have Wagner at the zenith of his
powers: the pleading of the man, the calm, cold majesty of the Valkyrie,
awe and pathos and heroic defiance, are all there. From the technical
point of view, the scene is equal to _Tristan_: the continuous sweep of
the music, with its ever-changing colours and emotions, is almost
supermasterly. The tragedy at the end is a stage rather than a musical
effect, and it is made the more powerful by being delayed so long and
then arriving with such terrific swiftness.
The last act opens on a high hill, where stands the Valkyries' rock, and
amidst thunder, lightning, and rain we get the Ride. Brunnhilda rushes
in to her sisters with Sieglinda, tells what she has done, and begs for
help. All are aghast and refuse. Sieglinda herself asks no aid; Siegmund
is dead, and she has nothing to live for. Brunnhilda tells her she
carries within her the seed of the world's mightiest hero, and in a
moment her mood changes, and she begs to be sheltered. Her ecstatic
outburst is due to a mother's instinctive joy and to the hope of having
someone or something to care for, and no more to be utterly forsaken and
purposeless. The maidens tell her of the dark wood where the dragon
hides, and Brunnhilda, chanting her hymn in praise of the love for which
one surrenders all, gives her the fragments of the sword and bids her
fly, awaiting with undaunted courage her own punishment. The god comes
in bursting with rage, and declares that Brunnhilda shall be left on the
mountain to wed the first man who finds her. The other maidens fly in
horror; she alone remains to make an appeal to Wotan, as Siegmund had
appealed to her. At first he is obdurate, but she begs him to spare her
that frightful disgrace, and to surround her with a wall of fire through
which only a great hero will dare to pass. He yields, taking her
godhood, her limited immortality, away from her, putting her to sleep,
calling up the fire, and swearing that only a hero who has no fear of
his spear shall pass through, and so the drama ends. Wotan has
definitely renounced love. The moment at which he can renounce life
rather than endure life without love has not yet come. The old Adam, the
biological bias, the will to live, is strong in us all.
When Liszt read the score of _The Valkyrie_, he wrote to Wagner that he
wanted to cry, like the chorus on the miraculous arrival of Lohengrin,
"Wunderschön! wunderschön!" No man can cry otherwise to-day when he
hears the last act. The summit of artistic achievement seemed to be
reached in the second act, but we are now carried still higher. After
the Ride, with its unequalled painting of tempest amongst the rocks and
pines, there comes Brunnhilda's glorious chant as she sends off
Sieglinda, then her long supplication to Wotan, and finally the sleep
and fire-music and Wotan's Farewell. The black storm gradually subsides,
the deep-blue night comes on, and against it we see the swirling,
crackling flames as the fire mounts, forming an impassable barrier that
cuts off Brunnhilda from the everyday, busy world. All Brunnhilda's
plaint is magnificent in its sweetness and pathos; and the sleep-music,
with its caressing, lulling figure, is a thing by which a man's memory
might well live for ever.
This, the tragedy of Siegmund and Sieglinda and the punishment of
Brunnhilda, is the first of the subsidiary dramas; the second, the
finding of Brunnhilda by Siegfried, must now be considered. We hear the
clinking of Mime's hammer, and the curtain rises on his home in a cave.
All is dark within save for the smouldering smithy fire; but facing it
is the hole in the rock which is the entrance, and through it we see the
green summer forest. Mime is a malignant dwarf, in whose care Sieglinda,
dying in childbirth, has left Siegfried. Years have passed, springs and
summers and winters have come and gone; but Nature goes on in her
imperturbable way, and Brunnhilda still lies wrapt in slumber on the
mountain heights, the subject of awe-struck whispers amongst passing
tribes. Mime tries in vain to piece the sherds of the sword together;
Siegfried always smashes the new-made weapon at a single blow. The
Wanderer, in his blue cloak, enters: it is Wotan, the heart-broken god,
going wearily about the world awaiting what may happen. Again we hear
the whole history of the _Ring_, but this time it is wrought into, and
becomes an essential part of, the drama. Mime wagers his head that he
will answer three questions put to him by the Wanderer, and having
triumphed twice, is posed by the third: "Who will make a useful sword of
these bits?" The Wanderer laughs at him, tells him it will be he who
knows not fear; and he leaves Mime's head to this hero. He goes off,
while fantastic lights dance without through the forest, until Mime is
in an agony of fear. But on this scene depends the whole subsequent
action. Mime tries to frighten Siegfried, and finds it impossible. He
wants the Nibelung's ring to rule the world: Siegfried is the only man
to get it; and after he has got it, Mime will avert the Wanderer's
prophesied disaster by poisoning him. He tells the history of Sieglinda
also, and Siegfried knows he is the hero. He will have no patching of
the sword: that sword was Wotan's and subject to his will; he grinds it
to powder, and makes one of his own, with which he will face either man
or god. In the making of it he sings the glorious Sword-song; and when
it is made he tests it by splitting the anvil with it. Here the first
act ends. There are two Siegfried themes to notice; the first, the Hero,
has been heard before:
[Illustration: Some bars of music]
In case I have too much insisted on the storm, passion, and fire in
_The Valkyrie_, it may be pointed out that these play little part in
_Siegfried_. Here we have first the calm summer morning, and if the
scene with the Wanderer is filled with that sense of the remote past,
and the Wanderer's exit uncanny, spectral--a very nightmare--much of the
other music, such as the bit where Siegfried describes himself looking
into the brook, and all the tale of Sieglinda, is tender and delicate;
the fresh morning wind blows continuously. The same is true of the
second act. After the beginning at Hate Hole, the slaying of the
dragon--which is always comic--and the squabble of Alberich and Mime, we
have scarcely anything but sustained beauty to the end. Having
accidentally tasted the dragon's blood, Siegfried knows exactly what
Mime means when he comes coaxingly to persuade him to drink the cup of
poison; so he passes the sword through him. Then follows the scene where
Siegfried lies in the sun and hears the wind murmuring in the trees, and
then listens to the bird as it sings of Brunnhilda asleep far away on
the mountains, and goes off to find her--all admirably painted in the
freshest tints. The last act opens in the mountains. It is dawn, and
gray scud is flying; the Wanderer summons Erda and learning nothing from
her, tells her, virtually, his determination to struggle no more, but to
await the end. Siegfried arrives; the Wanderer bars his way to try him;
but Siegfried has no fear of the spear, and the sword was made by his
own hands; so the spear is shattered, and he goes on his way. He passes
through the fire, which immediately subsides.
The scenery changes to that of the last of _The Valkyrie_, save that
(generally) someone has erected a wall behind Brunnhilda. It is a calm
summer afternoon; far away other hills are seen sleeping in the sun;
Grani, Brunnhilda's horse, grazes quietly at one side; Brunnhilda,
covered by her shield, her spear by her side, slumbers on. Siegfried
enters, and after many doubts, wakes her with a kiss. At first she
fiercely revolts against the new tyranny, the most terrible consequence
of her crime; but she yields in the end, and the drama ends with a
love-duet of a curious kind--not so much loving and passionate as heroic
and triumphant, with a most elaborate cadenza, as if Wagner had said to
himself, "Here's an end to all theories!"
In the prologue of the _Dusk of the Gods_ we find the Norns spinning in
the dark near Brunnhilda's cave; the rope they are at work on breaks,
and they learn that the end is near. They disappear; day breaks, and
Siegfried and Brunnhilda enter. She is sending him to do heroic deeds,
quite in the spirit of medieval chivalry; he presents her with the ring
and goes, wearing her armour and taking her horse. He arrives at the
hall of Gibichungs, where he finds Gunther, his sister Gutruna and
Hagen, a son of Alberich. They give Siegfried a draught which takes away
his memory; he falls in love with Gutruna, and when they propose that he
should take Gunther's shape and win Brunnhilda for him, he agrees at
once. In the meantime, Waltraute, a Valkyrie, knowing Wotan's need of
the ring, has come and tried in vain to get it; Brunnhilda refuses to
part with it. Presently Siegfried, wearing the tarnhelm, comes and
claims her, and compels her to share his couch, placing his sword
between them to keep faith with Gunther. The ring, however, he tears
from her. She is overcome with dismay and grief. When, at the end of
_The Valkyrie,_ Wotan had pronounced her doom, it had seemed bad enough;
but this is a thousand times worse, and she cannot understand the god's
cruelty. Arrived at Gunther's home, she of course recognises Siegfried
in his own shape, and knows by the ring that it was he, changed by the
tarnhelm, and not Gunther, who had broken through the fire a second
time. Her sorrow changes to fierce anger; she denounces him, and says he
has not kept faith with Gunther; he does not remember anything that
occurred previous to drinking the potion, knows he has been true to
Gunther, and goes joyfully off with his new bride. Gunther thinks he has
been dishonoured; Brunnhilda is furious at her betrayal; Hagen wants to
get the ring; and the three decide that Siegfried must die. There can be
no explaining away the draught. In _Tristan_ it is not essential that
the philtre is a true love-philtre, but here the case is different. If
it symbolizes, as has been suggested, a sudden passion for Gutruna, then
Siegfried is an out-and-out blackguard, and not the hero Wagner
intended. Besides, if the loss of his memory leads to the sacrifice of
Brunnhilda, afterwards its sudden return, due to another potion, leads
immediately to his own death. We must accept these potions as part of
the machinery. If we do not grumble at talking dragons, tarnhelms,
flying horses and fires and magic swords, we need not boggle at a couple
of glasses of magical liquid.
In the last act Siegfried, out hunting with the Gibichung tribe, finds
himself alone by the riverside. The Rhine-maidens beg the ring from him;
he refuses, and they tell him that this day he must die. The other
hunters arrive, and Siegfried, drinking the second philtre, tells the
story of how he first won Brunnhilda. That is Hagen's opportunity: to
avenge Gunther he stabs Siegfried in the back. To the tremendous funeral
march the body is carried over the hills. It is brought into the hall of
the Gibichungs. Gunther has pangs of remorse, but Hagen, only
half-human, has none; the pair fall out, and Gunther is killed. Gutruna
wails, as a woman will when she loses her husband and brother within a
quarter of an hour; Hagen goes to take the ring from Siegfried's finger,
but the corpse raises its hand menacingly and all draw back aghast.
Brunnhilda enters; all now has become clear to her, and she resolves
that she, like Wotan, will renounce a loveless life--a life based on
fraud and tyranny. She tells Gutruna that Siegfried has never belonged
to her--is hers, Brunnhilda's; and on receiving this crushing blow,
Gutruna creeps to her brother's side and lies there, miserable and
hopeless. He is dead; but he was the list of her kin and only friend,
and, robbed of even the memory of Siegfried, to be near his dead body
seems better than nothing. Then Brunnhilda commands the funeral pyre to
be built and the body of Siegfried placed on it; she chants her song in
praise of love, mounts her horse Grani, and rides through the fire into
the Rhine. Shouting "The ring!" Hagen dashes after her; the ring has
returned to the maidens, and Loge, unchained, mounts up and Walhalla is
consumed. So ends the third subsidiary drama of the _Ring_.
The music is the last Wagner wrote in his ripe period; when we get to
_Parsifal_ his powers were waning. In point of structure it is the same
as that of _Siegfried_. It has less of springtime freshness than the
_Valkyrie_, and the prevailing colour is sombre and tragic; but there
are magnificent things. The Norns scene, the Journey of the Rhine, the
Waltrante scene, the funeral march, and Brunnhilda's final speech, are
Wagner in the full glory of his strength.
The complete _Ring_ was given for the first time at the opening of the
Bayreuth (Wagner) Theatre in 1876. The performance did not pay, and the
expenses had to be covered by selling the dresses and scenery. Bayreuth
was by no means in those days the fashionable summer resort it has since
become. Nevertheless, the immediate effect felt throughout Europe was
electric, stupendous. As a mere advertisement, it proved more effective
than anything devised for pills and patent soaps. Hundreds who went to
Bayreuth to pass the time, or at most in a spirit of intelligent
curiosity, came away converted to the new faith; many who went to sponge
remained to pay; and all preached the doctrine of Wagnerism wherever
they went. Well they might. As I was an infant at the time, my
recollections of the first performances and of Wagner's speech are not
so vivid as those of some of my younger colleagues, who, like myself,
were not there; but, according to all creditable accounts, the
representations must have been a nearer approach to perfection in all
respects, save the singing, than anything seen before. In one sense
Wagner had attempted no revolution in stage-craft; but in another sense
it was, perhaps, the best sort of revolution to secure the ablest men,
and make them take care, pains, with their work. Anyhow, if tolerable
operatic representations can now be seen in every country of Europe save
Italy, the credit must go to Wagner, who first taught the impresarios
what to aim at and how to achieve their aim, and gave the accursed star
system a blow from which it is slowly dying. Carefully nursed though it
is in New York and at Covent Garden, its convulsive shudders announce
impending death, and already one hears the wail of those who mourn a
departing order of things.
"PARSIFAL" (1882).
This disastrous and evil opera was written in Wagner's old age, under
the influence of such a set of disagreeably immoral persons as has
seldom if ever been gathered together in so small a town as Bayreuth.
The whole drama consists in this: At Montsalvat there was a monastery,
and the head became seriously ill because he had been seen with a lady.
In the long-run he is saved by a young man--rightly called a "fool"--who
cannot tolerate the sight of a woman. What it all means--the grotesque
parody of the Last Supper, the death of the last woman in the world, the
spear which has caused the Abbot's wound and then cures it--these are
not matters to be entered into here. Some of the music is fine.