Libretto & Synopsis - EMI Classics

SYNOPSIS
In the ‘third day’ of his ‘stage festival’, Wagner was able to deploy the new skills in word-setting, orchestration and use of
leitmotifs that he had acquired while writing Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg in between the composition of
Acts II and III of Siegfried. One has only to compare his use of relatively basic, short, identikit leitmotifs in Das Rheingold (the
giants’ music) with their lengthier, better integrated successors in Götterdämmerung. Here the fabric of the score itself seems to
have been eaten into by the falling phrase of Alberich’s curse, while the richly intertwining and contrapuntal displays of passages
like Siegfried’s Rhine Journey, Siegfried’s arrival at the Gibichung Hall or the extraordinary intervals of Brünnhilde’s outbursts of
rage in Act II (the orchestra seeming to leap from Weber’s Wolf’s Glen to Strauss’s Elektra in a matter of bars) testify to a greatly
increased range of colour, tonality and musico-dramatic effects. In addition to these ‘new’ developments, Wagner makes clever
use of ‘old’ effects – some duets are allowed (the blood-brotherhood oath) and even a full-blooded chorus (Hagen’s vassals).
These do not represent, as Bernard Shaw famously complained, a sell-out to grand operatic tradition but rather Wagner’s
deliberate use of older, conventional musical forms to depict older, conventional people.
Compact Disc 1
PROLOGUE
The same scene as at the end of the second day, on the Valkyries’ rock.
The Norns are the Northern Fates, unnamed by Wagner, but in the sagas called Urd, or Wurd (like the ‘weird’ sisters in Macbeth),
representing the past, Verdandi the present, and Skuld the future. Wagner looked to imitate the dry, enigmatic speech-patterns of
the Poetic Edda’s Völuspá (‘The Wise Woman’s Prophesy’) – ‘Much description of wisdom have the three maidens/who came from
the waters close to that tree/They established laws, decided the lives/men were to lead, marked out their fates’. The orchestral
prelude [1] recalls the awakening of Brünnhilde on her rock surrounded by fire, Erda (whose daughters the Norns are), Nature
(from which the Norns have come) and the annunciation of death. Taking turns, the Norns relate the events of the world to date
and to come, with especial emphasis on the fate (and decisions) of Wotan. They also continue to spin the thread of destiny [2],
though they are losing knowledge and are not even sure whether the growing light they can see is dawn, or Loge’s fire that surrounds
Brünnhilde’s rock. As night wanes [3], their vision fades completely – Alberich’s curse on the ring gnaws at their rope. It
breaks. They abandon their prophetic role and return to their mother Erda.
2