There’s nothing quite as Germanic as a Wagner opera, and nothing quite as epic as his magnum opus, Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung). The full cycle of the four parts of The Ring lasts fifteen hours and although pragmatism these days generally means that just one of the parts is performed, I do like the idea of watching it in its entirety. A bit like reading Proust’s In Search Of Lost Time in its 1.2 million word entirety (see my blog on that here). Neither challenge have I yet undertaken, I should say, but back in 1876, it must have been some spectacle to have attended the famous Bayreuth Festival, when the full cycle was performed for the first time, over four days: Das Rheingold (The Rhinegold), Die Walküre (The Valkyrie), Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods)
The opera is loosely based on characters from Germanic and Norse heroic legend and centres around the eponymous magic ring that grants dominion over the world and how it is fought over by generations of gods, heroes and mythical creatures, until the final cataclysm at the end of the Götterdämmerung. The complexity of the epic tale is matched by the increasing complexity of the music as it progresses, and Wagner wrote for such a gargantuan orchestra that a special purpose-built theatre was built at Bayreuth.
The piece that we all know is the Ride of the Valkyries from Die Walküre, containing that rousing leitmotif as the Valkyrie sisters of Norse mythology (“choosers of the slain”) transport the fallen heroes to Valhalla. The music was used in Apocalypse Now (1979) where it was played on helicopter-mounted loudspeakers during the American assault on Vietcong-controlled villages. And just recently, in the excellent and grittily honest TV documentary film, Our Falklands War: A Frontline Story, it was revealed that it was similarly played loudly over the tannoy as 2 Para were getting into the landing craft in preparation for their first assault on the Falkland Islands.
Here’s a version from the BBC Proms, best enjoyed from a sofa rather than a landing craft.
