When the Frankfurt Opera recently staged a new production of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, the giants Fasolt and Fafner appeared as huge terra-cotta statues. Standing in front of them were expressionless singers who resembled union representatives in business suits. The noble hero Siegfried looked like a chubby schoolboy, while Brunnhilde rode around on Wotan's back. Gutrune played with a rubber doll, and the Norns wove a theater curtain. At the end, the audience heartily booed the director, sets, and costumes, and enthusiastically cheered the cast and conductor.
When the Bavarian State Opera's new Ring cycle was staged a few weeks later in Munich, Nibelheim was turned into a gloomy mechanical foundry serviced by robots, and Valhalla was a mélange of twentieth-century living room furniture. Wotan put Brunnhilde to sleep in a giant open-ended space capsule. Hagen resembled a Mephistophelian New York mafioso, and the Gibichung men were portrayed as fascist guards. Once again, the final curtain brought heavy booing for the production team and wild cheering for cast and conductor.
What has happened to Wagner's Ring? What has become of all those magical Romantic visions of gods and giants, dragons and dwarfs, caves, cliffs, and palaces? Wagner's Ring is very much alive and well; it just happens to be in a process of dissection, scrutiny, and interpretation in a cultural environment that insists on seeking new meaning and relevance. More than a century after the first complete performance of Der Ring des Nibelungen under the composer's own supervision at Bayreuth, the work - in spirit and music - survives intact, even if its traditional images do not. There is no bottom line on new meaning or nuance in the Ring. It still presents the largest technical, musical, and financial challenge that an opera company can face. It continues to make impossible demands on the voice; it divides and stimulates its audiences more than any other work of music theater, while still offering a potent message about the deeper human truths - love, power, and redemption. There always seems to be room in the world's opera schedules for a new Ring.
Frankfurt Avant-Garde
In West Germany, where the Ring has become a virtual battle-ground for opposing political and artistic viewpoints, Frankfurt and Munich were well placed to provide contrasting interpretations and impressions. There had not been a complete Ring in Frankfurt for fifty years. Various attempts to stage it in the first three decades after World War II had foundered, often with the overtones of operatic scandal. In the 1970s, when Christoph von Dohnanyi was director, the house had tentatively begun to explore the more experimental ground in modern music theater. After conductor Michael Gielen took over in 1977, the avant-garde was adopted as the house style.
Gielen's choice of a stage director for the Ring was Ruth Berghaus, an East German whose mannered productions of operative repertory ranging from Mozart to Berlioz have become the mainstay of the company's progressive image in recent years. Gielen built up his cycle steadily over two seasons, reaching Gotterdammerung in March this year and crowning his ten-year period as director with three complete cycles in April, May, and June. As Gielen prepared for the more tranquil atmosphere of Baden-Baden, where he takes over as chief conductor of the South-West German Radio Orchestra in September, his Ring
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