On the pleasures of getting lostin Götterdämmerung: revisiting the path to here, Part 1

Siegfried tries to awaken Brünnhilde

[As SIEGFRIED approaches the sleeper again, he is again filled with tender emotion at the sight of her. He bends over her.]
Sweet and quivering, her lovely mouth.
A gentle gladness charms fear from my heart!
Ah! how enchanting her warm, fragrant breath!
[As if in despair] Awaken! Awaken! Holiest maid!

-- from Siegfried, Act III, Scene 3 (singing translation by
Andrew Porter, used in the Remedios-Goodall performance)

[in English] Alberto Remedios (t), Siegfried; Sadler's Wells Opera Orchestra, Reginald Goodall, cond. EMI-Chandos, recorded live, August 1973

Lauritz Melchior (t), Siegfried; Berlin State Opera Orchestra, Robert Heger, cond. EMI, recorded May 12, 1930

Lauritz Melchior (t), Siegfried; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Artur Bodanzky, cond. Live performance, Jan. 30, 1937

Günther Treptow (t), Siegfried; Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Rudolf Moralt, cond. Myto, live recording of a 1949 concert performance of the act

Set Svanholm (t), Siegfried; Orchestra of the Teatro alla Scala, Wilhelm Furtwängler, cond. Live performance, Mar. 23, 1950

Wolfgang Windgassen (t), Siegfried; Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, Karl Böhm, cond. Philips, recorded live, July 1966

Siegfried Jerusalem (t), Siegfried; Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, Daniel Barenboim, cond. Teldec, recorded live, June-July 1992

[Note: We'll be hearing a fuller version of this scene in Part 2 of this post, when we'll talk a little about the performances. Meanwhile, I hope you're storing up your impressions of them! -- Ed.]

by Ken

As I explained in last week's still-unfollowed-up-on "post taste," "This is where we'd really like to start this week, but --," our inquiry into that starkly mysterious and foreboding character Hagen has led us back to the start of Götterdämmerung. Because what precedes in Wagner's Ring cycle is such a vast expanse of meticulously detailed music drama, it can be easy to forget how massive its final leg is in its own right -- at least until we're buckled in for the nearly two-hour expanse of Götterdämmerung's Prologue and Act I.

Götterdämmerung: Prologue: Orchestral prelude


Bavarian State Orchestra, Wolfgang Sawallisch, cond. EMI, recorded live at the Bavarian State Opera, November 1989

This two-minute prelude is the low-keyed and nevertheless magisterial opening of Götterdämmerung, aka Twilight of the Gods, the "Third Day" of The Ring of the Nibelung -- or by normal counting standards the fourth opera, since Wagner counted Das Rheingold, a massive expanse in its own right (running an uninterrupted two and a half to two and three-quarters hours), strictly as a prologue to the three "days" that follow.

What I'm trying to give a feel for is the way Wagner's unique operatic method enables him to create such finely detailed moments -- and there are no moments in the entire expanse of The Ring (let's call it roughly 14-15 hours; even among the handful of recorded Rings I spot-checked there were outliers: Böhm-Bayreuth 1966-67 at the quick end, at 13:39, and Goodall-English National Opera,1973-77, at the gradual end, at 16:03) that aren't finely detailed -- that are nevertheless bound musicodramatically to countless other moments in that vast expanse. In a bit we're going to hear the little Götterdämmerung orchestral prelude again and this time continue on a bit in the Prologue, taking in just a little of the chillingly awesome Norn Scene.

For now, though, let's just note that the music out of which this two-minute orchestral intro is fashioned is what I'm going to call "the 'Awakening' music," the music to which we witness Brünnhilde awakening from her long sleep in the final act of Siegfried, the "Second Day" of The Ring.


AS YOU'VE PROBABLY GATHERED, ONE OF OUR DESTINATIONS
TODAY IS THE "AWAKENING" ITSELF, BUT NOT BEFORE . . .

Post taste: This is where we'd really like to start this week, but --

UPDATE: The usual thousand apologies, but the promised continuation of this "post tease" is now up for viewing:
"On the pleasures of getting lost in Götterdämmerung: revisiting the path to here, Part 1."

LIKE IT SAYS ABOVE, THIS IS WHERE WE'D LIKE TO START:


All clips: Bavarian State Orchestra, Wolfgang Sawallisch, cond. (1989, live)

ONLY, FROM THERE WE'D NEED TO GO STRAIGHT BACK TO:



And if we're going back, maybe we should go back a bit farther?



by Ken

Come to think of it, once we get to that hoped-for starting point (pushing ahead from last week's post, "About the Nibelung I recently heard a rumor . . . ") we'll have to do an even farther-backwards jump, to get to this:

Whoever fears the tip of my spear
shall never pass through the fire!

with Robert Hale, bass-baritone

Come to think some more, once we did that first jump-back, wouldn't we also want to do this crucial jump-ahead?

Brünnhilde! Holy bride!
Wake up! Open your eyes!

with René Kollo, tenor

Which, if we continued, would take us to this famous orchestral setpiece:




WE'LL GET THIS ALL SORTED IN DUE TIME.
FOR NOW, IF THIS IS ALL TOO HYPOTHETICAL ---

You can click through to hear these clips properly identified.

"About the Nibelung I recently heard a rumor . . . "

TUESDAY NIGHT UPDATE: Progress is made. We've got the Götterdämmerung Prologue-to-Act I texts in place, and the cleaning up and filling in of the post text has begun.

It all started with Alberich (here, Eric Owens at the Met) and his discovery of the superpower he could enjoy if he managed to get hold of the Rhinegold and shape it into a ring.

by Ken

FIRST, A FEW EXPLANATORY NOTES

(in case you're wondering what the heck this is you're looking at!)

Explanatory Note No. 1: Last week we met the character who for me is one of the most engrossing not just in opera but in any theatrical or for that matter any fictional medium: Hagen, one of the final trio of characters Wagner presents to us in The Ring of the Nibelung, in the company of his half-siblings Gunther and Gutrune. We meet them chatting in their home, the Hall of the Gibichungs, as the curtain rises on Act I of the final installment of The Ring, Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods) -- following, that is, the 40-minute-or-so Prologue, which together will form one of Wagner's super-acts, clocking in at not a whole lot less than two hours.

I pointed out that we were not meeting Hagen at the point of his actual presentation to the audience, though I promised we'd eventually get back to that. Instead we met him at a stunningly personal moment: as he is left alone to sit watch over the hall while Gunther heads off on a mad adventure with their recently arrived guest Siegfried -- a scheme of Hagen's devising, aimed at bringing within his reach the much-sought-after superpower-giving Ring of the Nibelung.


JUST TO REFRESH OUR MEMORIES --

Ladies and gents, meet Hagen[in fullest and final(ish) post form]

TUESDAY MORNING (FINAL) UPDATE: I did finally add some extra thumbs-up versions of our chosen scenelet, but this still leaves loads of stuff undone, as summarized in the note at the end.

Let's eavesdrop -- for now just a bit --
on Hagen, left alone with his thoughts

"Hier sitz' ich zur Wacht": William Wildermann as Hagen

"sits watch" over the Hall of the Gibichungs in Seattle, 1975.

You sons of freedom,

joyful companions,

merrily sail on your way!

Though you may scorn me,

you'll serve me soon,

the Nibelung's son.

-- singing translation by Andrew Porter,

used in our English-language recording

[1]

[Suggestion: Dial back the volume on [1]; my source is loud (and noisy).]
[2]

[3]

[4 (in English)]

Patience, Hagen fans! Credits for the performances will appear in due time.

by Ken

Not a "whistle a happy tune" kind of guy is our Hagen.

One of the above performances is very much not like the others, and I'm not thinking about the difference in language between our first performance and the others. I've intentionally omitted identification of the performances so we can focus on the performances themselves, but be assured that eventually they'll be fully identified, when we'll also clarify another, even more obvious trick embedded in the layout of the performances. For now, I'm just curious whether the difference I have in mind will be as obvious to other listeners.

Now, this isn't literally our meeting with Hagen, as might have been assumed from the post title. That occurred roughly 40 minutes earlier in Götterdämmerung, at the start of Act I -- and we need to remember that Act I isn't the start of Götterdämmerung, inseparably attached as it is to the roughly 40-minute Prologue, counting the extraordinary orchestral bridge known as "Siegfried's Rhine Journey," which takes us from the ecstasies of Brünnhilde's sendoff to her beloved Siegfried, as he sets out on his journey on the Rhine, to the more workaday world of the Gibichungs, specifically the king and queen of the Gibichungs, the brother and sister Gunther and Gutrune, and their half-brother (same mother, different fathers) Hagen.

(According to present plan -- and for those of you who are new to these parts, "plans" hereabouts have a way of, er, mutating -- we are eventually going to hear our initial encounter with Hagen.)

Let's hop on the boat with Siegfried for his "Rhine Journey"!

A closer look at, or anyway listen to, "persondom" at play in Act I of Die Walküre

Furtwängler rehearses with the Vienna Philharmonic on tour in London's Royal Festival Hall, 1948.

by Ken

For all sorts of reasons, this week's sights are set low: We're not going to do much more than cover the same ground we did last week ("If we're aiming to focus on Hunding -- and we are -- then first we need to get him onstage"), the chunk of Act I of Die Walküre from the start of the pounding orchestral prelude through Hunding's reply to Siegmund, with a small tack-on, the stage business as Hunding sends his wife off off to prepare a meal for himself and their uninvited guest, including his startled observation of the physical resemblance between his wife and the stranger, and with two changes of "reference":

* attention-wise, as close consideration as possible of what I described last week as the characters' "persondom," which is to say the way the writing for them connects to our experience of being human, and --

* performance-wise, listening to a set of recordings I've hankered for some time to butt up against one another: the four recorded performances of this seminal act we have by that unique Wagner conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler.

Of course "persondom" is easier to detect in Die Walküre Act I than in much of the rest of The Ring. This doesn't mean it's any less important in the rest of The Ring, as I hope has been clear in the considerable assortment of excerpts we've heard over the years. I'm thinking that maybe if we pay due attention here, it'll be more apparent elsewhere.

(Next week, according to plan, as we finish up with Hunding we're slated to eavesdrop on the chilling and yet riveting Hagen in Götterdämmerung. And you know, it might be interesting at some point to dive into the SC audio archive and, from this perspective of "persondom," revisit the Ring excerpts we've heard. Think of, say, the giants Fasolt and Fafner in Rheingold fighting to get fair payment for their labors, and then fighting with each other, or the Nibelung Mime, arguably the least sympathetic character in The Ring, grappling with his humongous problem in the singularly tormented opening of Siegfried.)


WHAT, FOUR FURTWANGLER RECORDINGS?