Richard Wagner spent a quarter century conceiving, composing, and mounting the extraordinary sequence of four music dramas that The Ring of the Nibelung comprises. He wrote his first prose draft of a libretto in 1848 and finally completed the last musical revisions in 1874. Drawing on his extensive reading in older epic poems, some probably composed in Iceland and the 12th-century Song of the Nibelung in Middle High German, he drafted a libretto for a single opera entitled Siegfried’s Death. This included so many references to past events in order to clarify the elements leading up to the tragic close that he sketched an earlier opera, Young Siegfried. Finally, to start the complex story at its beginning, he drafted The Rhine Gold and The Valkyrie. Having laid out the full story to his satisfaction, he began composing the music in chronological order, recounting the tale from the theft of the magic gold from the bottom of the Rhine, where it was supposed to be guarded by the Rhine Maidens to its final return to them by Brünnhilde after the murder of her lover Siegfried.
The extraordinary achievement of this epic score, requiring 14.5 hours over four nights at its first complete performance in 1876, has challenged opera companies ever since. But the richness and color of Wagner’s score has also attracted symphony orchestras, though always in shorter, selective presentations, sometimes with excerpts (“bleeding chunks,” as critics have sometimes referred to them) like “The Ride of the Valkyries” or “Siegfried’s Funeral March.” And now and then symphonies have chosen to present one entire act with singers but no staging. Three such acts out of the entire scope of the tetralogy have been especially favored for this treatment: the first and last acts of Die Walküre; Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony offered the close of the entire cycle, Act III of Götterdämmerung, last Saturday.
This final act consists of two scenes separated by an orchestra interlude, all serving to draw together the many threads of the multi-generational plot. The first scene moves from the brightly playful Rhine Maidens who tease Siegfried and ask that he give them the ring on his finger — made from the fateful gold once stolen from them. Siegfried refuses, and they foretell that he will die before the day ends. When they are gone, Siegfried is joined by a hunting party, including Hagen, the son of Alberich, who originally stole the gold. Siegfried is asked to tell of his adventures, during which Hagen stabs him in the back to “avenge perjury,” as Hagen manipulated Siegfried’s memory with a potion so that he unwittingly swore to a lie. Hagen orders the man to lift Siegfried’s body onto a bier to carry him back to their base. The orchestral interlude between the two scenes is the somber passage known as “Siegfried’s Funeral March.”
The final scene of the vast composition takes place in the hall of the Gibichungs on the banks of the Rhine. Brünnhilde hears of Siegfried’s death and has come to understand that she was tricked into thinking him faithless and demanding his death. She orders the vassals to construct a funeral pyre and place his body on it. She takes the ring from Siegfried’s finger and puts it on her own, And she sends the two ravens, Wotan’s messengers, to report to Valhalla its coming downfall as the twilight of the gods (among whom Brünnhilde herself was once a handmaiden) is about to occur. Taking a flaming brand, she throws it onto the pyre. As the flames rise, she mounts her steed, with whom she once flew through the air as a Valkyrie, and rides him onto the pyre. The flames fill the entire stage. As they start to die away, the distant image of Valhalla itself is seen ablaze. Then the Rhine surges over its banks and fills the stage space as the Rhinemaidens come and take the ring from Brünnhilde’s finger to return it to its rightful place in the bottom of the Rhine, where it is cleansed of its curse. (Hagen attempts to get it from them, but they drag him underwater to drown him.) The water sinks back into the Rhine, and the entire world is reborn, with a soaring lyrical theme in the orchestra (heard only once before in the entire saga, in the last act of Die Walküre) generally identified as “redemption by love.”
As this brief summary of the final act of Götterdämmerung indicates, a lot of activity goes on without any singing. In the opera house, the audience can presumably see what is happening. But in a concert performance, much would be lost. Happily, Tanglewood provided not only surtitles of the text, but also, in italics, descriptions of all the passages where something visual needs explanation. This proved hugely advantageous for concertgoers unfamiliar with the details of the action, especially in the final minutes after Brünnhilde sings her final words and leaps into the fire. For several minutes, the orchestra alone projects the end of the world of Wotan and the dwarfs, giants, dragons, and Rhine Maidens and the rise of a new world order.
Of course, the music is exciting and deeply stirring throughout, and it was exceptionally so with the enlarged Boston Symphony Orchestra (six harps!) in full cry under the baton of Andris Nelsons, who had the full mastery of the musical drama, the ever-changing balances and colors of the orchestra, and the pacing of the events. The brilliant splashes of color with the playful daughters of the Rhine contrasted strikingly with the widespread brass instruments representing the hunters gathering near Siegfried. Thunderous double-pounding of the paired timpani followed, each struck by two mallets at once, evoking the general horror of Siegfried’s murder. The funeral march, of darkest orchestral hues, moved with tragic weight to the final scene that ends the vast epic.
The singers made gestures that suggested that action (such as the Rhine Maidens’ flirtatious conversation with Siegfried, and Hagen’s stabbing Siegfried in the back), but for the most part exits and entrances as established by stage coordinator John Matsumoto Giampietro indicated the action. The singing, though, carried the plot clearly. The three Rhine Maidens (Diana Newman as Woglinde, Renée Tatum as Wellgunde, and Annie Rosen as Flosshilde) were suitably teasing. Michael Weinius sang in that scene with appropriate playfulness, and he effectively intoned the narrative in which he tells the hunters of his life story—being tricked by Hagen into revealing this unintentional mistruth that motivates this murder by Hagen. He dies with Brünnhilde’s name on his lips. David Leigh (Hagen) made his BSO and Tanglewood debut, revealing a dark bass voice ideal for this villainous role. In the final scene of the entire cycle, Amanda Majeski (Gutrune) has the smallest part in this act, but both sang and acted the tragic sentiments particularly well. Hagen also murdered James Rutherford (Gunther) after he tried to take Siegfried’s ring.
Of course Brünnhilde dominates the entire closing scene; she becomes increasingly important as the epic progresses, appearing in Acts 2 and 3 of Die Walküre, Act 3 of Siegfried, and all three acts of Götterdämmerung. Her belated understanding of everything that has happened calls for dramatic singing of a wide range of moods, and naturally a special singer must be called upon for such a role. Christine Goerke, one of the leading Wagner sopranos today met all the demands and more. Her voice carried through the Shed even with the enlarged Boston Symphony behind her, only occasionally being slightly overwhelmed in lower lines in her tessitura (Wagner put his own orchestra in a pit partly under the stage and largely covered to help his leading singers), but the growing intensity of her command of the entire situation, climbed continually to her final words as we imagine her climbing onto her horse and plunging into the fire: “Siegfried, blissfully your wife greets you”!