The Ring

When the Metropolitan Opera Company was begging for its life last winter its most eloquent plea was the stirring performances given in the Wagner Matinee Cycle. Not since the War had New York heard such German opera. Most of the Met's other performances came nowhere near paying their own way but the Wagner matinees sold out to the doors. This week a new Wagner cycle begins with subscriptions topping last year's. This week's opera is Tannhauser. Next week The Ring of the Nibelung begins, the four operas to be given at weekly intervals through March 9.

Reasons for the growing interest in Wagner are the contingent of excellent German artists now at the Met; the Company's acquisition last year of Soprano Frida Leider, Contralto Maria Olszewska and Basso Ludwig Hofmann; the improvement of Tenor Lauritz Melchior since Conductor Arturo Toscanini rehearsed him in Bayreuth summer before last; the quickened inspiration of Conductor Artur Bodanzky. During the War New York preferred to do without German opera. It took the conservative Met a good ten years to build up its German wing to something like pre-War strength. During that time a new generation of Wagner enthusiasts grew up, to learn that the operas are not dull because they are long, that the Ring's complicated plot and hundred-odd motifs are well worth studying since they build up into such a colossal whole.

The tremendous scope of the Ring with its mass of detail is frightening to many a first hearer. Richard Wagner was 26 years writing it, doing first the poem of Die Gotterdammerung, prefacing it then with Siegfried, Die Walkure, Rheingold. Before the music was written Wagner turned out Tristan and Die Meistersinger, operas that he trusted to keep him before the public while the great tetralogy was in its slow making. The Ring's music was written chronologically. Its design is like a symphony with Rheingold corresponding to an introductory first movement; Walkure to a tender andante; Siegfried to a scherzo and Die Gotterdammerung to a great finale. The four operas take 15 hours to give.

Das Rheingold begins with the persistent sounding of the E flat chord, swelling and rolling for 136 bars to suggest the timeless motion of the River Rhine. First scene is set on the bottom of the Rhine where three maidens, swimming around by a pulley and cable arrangement,* are guarding a hoard of gold in the rocks. Alberich, a horrid, hairy dwarf of the Nibelung race, has first eyes for the maidens but greed possesses him when he learns that one who will forswear love can fashion from the gold a ring which will make him master of the world. On love he cries a curse, snatches the gold, takes it away to his cave where he gets his sniveling brother Mime to make him the ring and a Tarnhelm (a magic helmet the wearer of which can either become invisible or take on any shape he chooses). Greed's fatal effect is the moral of the Ring. The great god Wotan becomes one of the pawns. He has hired the giants Fasolt and Fafner to build him the castle Valhalla, pledged them in payment his sister-in-law Freia, goddess of youth and beauty. Loge, the treacherous fire god, tells Wotan of the gold Alberich has stolen. Together they go to the Nibe- lung's cave, trick Alberich into putting on the Tarnhelm and turning himself into a toad, whereupon Wotan steps on him, gets the treasure, gives it to the giants as a means of saving Freia for the gods. Already the ring carries a curse. Fasolt and Fafner fight over it and Fasolt is killed. Every concert audience has heard the triumphant march which marks the gods' entrance into Valhalla. Fafner has clumped off by himself with the gold, the Tarnhelm and the ring.

Die Walkure. Das Rheingold lasts only two hours (without pause) but it lays the groundwork for the Ring. In Rheingold Wotan has two wives: shrewish Fricka, goddess of marriage who suggests Wagner's first wife Minna; and Erda, goddess of the earth and wisdom. By Erda, when Walkure begins, Wotan has had nine amazon daughters whose job is to collect the bodies of slain heroes, bring them into Valhalla where, reincarnated, they will help guard the fortress. By a mortal woman Wotan has also had Siegmund and Sieglinde. Wotan's aim has been to beget a hero who would be the guileless means of recovering the ring for the gods so that Wotan would not be guilty of breaking his word to Fafner.

Siegmund and Sieglinde grow up not knowing each other but they meet in the house of Hunding, Sieglinde's husband. Walkure starts with the storm which sends Siegmund inside. Deep strings suggest the pelting of the rain. Discordant woodwinds flash out lightning. Tubas crash in with the thunder motif. Siegmund and Sieglinde inevitably fall in love. Out of the great ash tree around which Hunding's house is built Siegmund pulls the mighty sword that Wotan has left there for him. He and Sieglinde escape into the forest, but the jealous Fricka intervenes. As goddess of marriage she demands the death of Siegmund for violating Hunding's home. Brunnhilde, favorite of the nine Valkyr daughters, knows Wotan's desires so well that she dares to disobey him, take Siegmund's side in his hand-to-hand fight with Hunding. But Wotan raises his own deadly spear. Siegmund is slain and Brunnhilde is sentenced to sleep on a rock surrounded by fire which only a perfect hero can pass. Smoke fills the stage. Strings describe the first dull flicker of the fire until the whole orchestra breaks out in gorgeous flaming sound.

Siegfried, son of Siegmund and Sieglinde, is the perfect hero. Mime, Alberich's brother, brings him up in his blacksmith shop, intends to use him to recover the ring. Siegfried wanders the forest, knows no fear. His only curiosity concerns his only inheritance, the splintered parts of Siegmund's sword which Mime has never been strong enough to weld together.

Siegfried swaggeringly welds the sword himself and, prompted by Mime, hunts up the cave of lazy, stupid Fafner who as soon as he got the treasure from Wotan (in Rheingold) turned himself into a dragon and planted himself on it. Siegfried slays the dragon (a grumbling old tuba, so far as the orchestra is concerned), takes the ring and the Tarnhelm as innocent trinkets of spoil. In the forest a singing bird shows him the way to the sleeping Brunnhilde.

Die Gotterdammerung begins with three norns spinning the dark threads of Wotan's fate. Brunnhilde wears Siegfried's ring. The two are completely happy but Siegfried leaves her to perform fresh deeds of glory. He sails down the Rhine to where Hagen, sinister, black-bearded son of Alberich, lives with Gunther, a half brother, and Gutrune, a sister. Hagen's plot to get the ring is to persuade Gunther that Brunnhilde is the only woman worthy to be his wife, that Siegfried alone is man enough to plunge through the fire and get her. Siegfried is given a potion which makes him forget Brunnhilde, have eyes only for Gutrune. Amiably he agrees to put on the Tarnhelm, goes disguised as Gunther back to the rock. Horror-stricken, Brunnhilde calls on the ring to protect her. Siegfried tears it from her finger. When she is led into Hagen's house it is just in time to see Siegfried's and Gutrune's wedding procession. Again Siegfried fails to recognize her but she sees the ring he is wearing, believes he has betrayed her. Then, Hagen says, Siegfried must die. But with her magic Brunnhilde has made him invulnerable save in the back and Siegfried, the hero, never turns his back on an enemy.

But Hagen ostensibly is Siegfried's friend. They go off hunting together.

Hagen wants to hear Siegfried's life story, makes him a potion that will restore his memory. He drinks the last few drops to Brunhilde, his bride. Hagen thrusts the spear in his back. The sky darkens. Ravens circle around. The hero's body is carried back to Hagen's hall while the orchestra sounds the funeral march, a tragic review of all the Siegfried themes. Gunther thinks the ring should be his but Hagen kills him with a stroke of his sword. Hagen approaches the dead man. The hand with the ring points up in awful warning. The last big scene is Brunnhilde's. She has the body placed on a funeral pyre, and before she mounts her horse and rides into the flames she tosses the ring back into the Rhine. Hagen dives for it. The current sucks him under. In the distance Valhalla is burning, destroying the gods. The music in the Ring, its power and its tenderness, the way Wagner translated love, fear, hate, ecstasy, the way he de scribed the gentle river sounds, the crack ling of fire, the howling of wind and storm, the darkness of destructionthese are the things that transform his wordy allegory into a never-ending wonder. There are motifs for every character, for every important situation.* They all weave into a sure, clear pattern, lavish with melody. Over all is an orchestration of color and richness that has never been surpassed.

In the Metropolitan's cycle Frida Leider will be Brunnhilde, Lauritz Melchior both Siegmund and Siegfried. Ludwig Hofmann and Friedrich Schorr will take turns being Wotan. Schorr will be Gunther and Emanuel List, Hagen. All are expert singers with a sure grasp of the meaning of their roles, a flare for the grand Wagnerian manner. Frida Leider is the world's greatest Brunnhilde and the role is the most difficult in all grand opera. Time has roughened some of her full, warm tones. But her poise, her feeling for every phrase make it easy to believe in a creature half goddess, half woman.

But singers, no matter how competent, cannot carry the Ring. Hero of the performances will be a tall, lean, satanic-looking man who will shoot into the orchestra pit just as the lights go down, spring up on his high chair, rap sharply for attention and start the great orchestra singing. He is Artur Bodanzky, son of a Hungarian paper manufacturer who was pleased enough, when his young son showed a talent for the violin. But fiddling in the Vienna opera orchestra made Bodanzky's fingers itch for a baton. He became a musical comedy conductor, the highest-paid in Vienna. The routine gave him a nervous breakdown. He took a small opera job, worked up to be first conductor in Mannheim whence he came to New York in 1915.

Back at the Met, Bodanzky has grown with the years. Though he sometimes still rushes through a performance as though he could scarcely wait for its end, in the Ring cycle he is at his best, making great music seem greater whether he is pointing a bony finger at a singer, whipping his men into a mighty crescendo or hissing them quiet.

Mme Schtumann-Heink swam thus the night before she gave birth to one of her eight children.

*Easiest way for the layman to learn the themes is by phonograph records. The Gramophone Shop in New York sells two records made by the London Symphony which give 90 of the Ring's themes and define them clearly. Price $3.50.

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