Wagner, R.: Der Ring

Description

Richard Wagner (1813 - 1883) Orchestral Highlights from Der Ring des NibelungenRichard Wagner inspired in his contemporaries extremes ofreaction. For some his music seemed as misguided and repulsive as his anti-Semitism, whileothers were overwhelmed by the size of his ambition and achievement, to which everythinghad to be sacrificed. Wagner's career was in many ways thoroughly discreditable. Hebetrayed friends and patrons, accumulated debts with abandon, and seemed, in pursuit ofhis aims, an unprincipled opportunist. Nevertheless, whatever his defects of character, heexercised a hypnotic influence over his immediate followers, while his creation of a newform of music-drama, in which the arts were combined, and the magnitude of his conceptioncontinue to fascinate.The tetralogy of The Ring,based on a conflation of Teutonic and Scandinavian legends, was originally conceived whileWagner was enjoying his first real success as conductor at the opera in Dresden, where Rienzi, The FlyingDutchman and Tannhaeuser werefirst performed. In 1848, with revolution in the air, Wagner began work on the poemconcerning the death of the hero Siegfried, a text that was to serve as the basis for thefourth opera in the cycle, Gotterdammerung. In 1849 Wagner was forced to leave Dresden in haste. Hiscreditors had, in any case, made his stay there uneasy, but in 1849 he was implicated inthe rising against the monarchy, and escaped to Switzerland, leaving his wife behind. Thefirst years of exile brought the completion of the text of The Ring and its publication in1853, followed by the composition of the music of the first opera, Das Rheingold by 1854 and the second, Die Walk??re two years later.The complete cycle, however, was performed for the first timeat the new Festspielhaus in Bayreuth in 1876. There, with the help of his young patronKing Ludwig II of Bavaria, he had been able to establish his own operatic kingdom,realising his revolutionary ideas of music-drama and investing the an of opera with asignificance and weight that it had not generally possessed before.In July, 1882, the last of Wagner's operas, Parsifal, was staged at Bayreuth, running forsixteen performances under the direction of Hermann Levi. In September the composertravelled again to Italy, where an easier way of life seemed likely to be of benefit tohis health. He died in Venice in February, 1883, after a severe heart attack and was laterburied in the garden of his house in Bayreuth. His legacy to the world was an enduringbody of stage works and a festival centred on them, as well as continued conflict betweenthose fascinated by his achievement and those appalled by aspects of his character and hiswriting.The allegorical story of TheRing, derived principally from the Nibelung Saga, concerns the conflict andstruggle for power between the Nibelung dwarfs, the giants and the gods. In Das RheingoldAlberich, the Nibelung dwarf, has stolen from the Rhine-maidens the Rhinegold, from whichhe has made a ring t