"You have to dream the ring"

Both as well as. In the end, however, you have to make YOUR own Ring . Like any great work, the Ring offers a variety of possible interpretations. However, the fact that the first performance of the Ring in Bayreuth is so well documented is particularly helpful! Wagner moaned in despair and disappointment about the stage design he had ordered: "This is realistic and not - fantastic!" Which outlines the possibility or impossibility of realization quite impressively!

A lot. Nevertheless, these instructions are valuable! Even if the instructions for the stage action are sometimes bizarrely excessive, Wagner's musical-dramatic language is thoroughly gestural and theatrical! You can and should rely on him. It's not a meticulous slavery that you get into. It is a framework that he offers us. He wants: expression, in harmony with the music. Nevertheless, every director will surely find his own way. Rules also mean, paradoxically: Freedom.

Yes, of course. The plan only proves itself at the rehearsal. Or not. Many things work at the desk. Or everything. But in the actual situation, the scene demands its due. If the characters want to come to life vividly. The conflicts must be dealt with. And since Wagner the playwright is much better than his reputation, you can't escape him. Yes, you have to penetrate the Ring intellectually, but you also have to bring it to life. Let it breathe. Sometimes simplicity and precision are more appropriate than impatience and over-painting. You can trust Wagner in the accuracy of his effects, and sometimes it is appropriate to hold back a little.

Wagner is able, and this is an indication of the worldliness of the work and its poetic quality, to give way to the characters and their respective subjective motivations without judgment. Of course Fricka is right. But so is Wotan. And Brünnhilde anyway. All his characters have their good reasons! This psychological polyphony must be staged. At the risk that the ideas and the allegorical/metaphorical content recede a little. But perhaps that is precisely what Wagner wanted. He had read Feuerbach: All religion is anthropology. So who should these gods resemble if not us?

Rolf Glittenberg, a Wagner expert, said to me long before I began to study the material: "You have to dream the Ring." As a curious person, I didn't believe him. But after all the detours into the paper maze of secondary literature, after considering and discarding a thousand things, I have to admit: I dream of the Ring! And I often dream about it. The Ring is itself a monstrous interpretation. That's why the clever Lars von Trier, in his writings about his Ring that didn't take place, rejected any intentions of interpretation. What the Ring wants to interpret is nothing less than: the world. More precisely, the people in the world. Nothing is left unsaid! Sometimes it is downright flat in its desire for proof! The contradictory, the dark, the inconsistent, the foreboding appeals to me more. After all, the political/ideological message of the Ring is not so startlingly new to us. My intellectual activity and my life are not limited to sentences like: "I am for world peace and down with injustice." Even the philosophical content à la Schopenhauer should be taken with a pinch of salt. The Ring is more than the sum of its intentions! Just like ourselves! The tetralogy also has its "unconscious".

Well, usually everything is proven in Rheingold and Götterdämmerung . For me personally, the four pieces are equally "difficult". Or beautiful.

Yes, the dialog between Wotan and Brünnhilde at the end of the third act. We witness the activities of the psyche. Someone is arguing with himself. Because Brünnhilde is, quite literally, a part of Wotan. One watches oneself being repressed. He doesn't want to hear about Sieglinde's confinement. He must not hear anything. Even if he already suspects Siegfried. Now he still hopes for him. And by cutting himself to pieces, he achieves what he denies but actually wants. Must not want. The hero. It is only in Götterdämmerung that his other part, Brünnhilde, the part he has punished and severed, realizes what he actually deeply wanted. And in Die Walküre and Siegfried , he could not yet want it. Even if he claimed it in his great monologue: the end. Because everything he then attempts in Die Walküre and Siegfried , even the sending of Waltraute in Götterdämmerung, proves the opposite. He is still hoping there. He is only deliberately trying to conquer the will.

But even the supposedly revolutionary Brünnhilde owes her liberation to her punishment. I can't remember reading or hearing a similarly crazy scene. At the same time, it is one of the most harrowing moments in the Ring. It is also the farewell of two lovers. A farewell to themselves. A sacrifice. A punishment. A doom. A renunciation. A finality. Heartbreaking. And immediately comprehensible. Not with the mind perhaps, but with all the other senses. Wagner's talent for constructing impenetrable, catastrophic stalemate situations sheds an eerie light on his ... and our nature. Strangely enough, there is little literature on this. Many elements of the Valkyrie - despite the huge orchestral forces - have the effect of a chamber play. How do you deal with this tension between orchestral scoring and scenic design? Sometimes there are huge charges, but they correspond to inner states. But isn't that a fundamental problem of opera in general, or its challenge? The person singing on stage is not "realistic". And never will be. In musical theater, you always have one foot in the fantastic realm. Wagner would have said Dionysian. Nevertheless, you have to retain a human dimension and credibility.

In any case, an artist like Wagner had a right, perhaps even a duty, to insist on this. After all, Wagner was addicted to effect and powerful. He also wanted to lift the audience into a different perception of time. Out of himself, into the world of his plays. These evenings are hallucinogens. Narcotics. And it all depends on the dose. I can certainly understand this desire.

Of course, which one he wanted to return to. Repetition is needed to create the network. That's a dramaturgically ingenious idea. The orchestra knows. Commented. This gives the listener a kind of bird's eye view. Suspicions, thoughts, connections arise as if by magic. If he listens and thinks along. Occasionally we also see deep inside the characters. Think of the famous sound of the sword motif in Rheingold. The orchestra thus becomes the chorus of ancient tragedy. When Siegmund sings at the climax of the sword scene, among other things to the renunciation motif that we already know from Das Rheingold , he is forebodingly aware of what is completely clear to us: this will not end well!

Maybe not there anymore. It's much funnier in Rheingold . But of course there is a certain recognition value for married couples. That may make you laugh. Even if the partners concerned don't feel like it.

It lies beneath Fafner's scaly dragon belly, which weighs tons! But his presence is still undeniable! For me, for example, the main character of Götterdämmerung is Wotan. But he doesn't appear. Apart from the final image. It couldn't be more effective. And so the Ring in Die Walküre also sparkles venomously and unmistakably prominently.