What does a loveless world look like?
Wagner gave us the answer in what is probably the greatest single piece of art ever written. Something which transcends even Shakespeare in a sense, because it carries drama into music and then beyond. Everything in the 'Ring' is based on brute force and violence, or on contracts and the law and therefore self interest. Wagner's utterly brilliant insight is to show us that these are two sides of the same coin, so Wotan on behalf of the Gods preserves law and contracts that are carved onto the spear that he holds, but he is himself deeply flawed and is involved in all sorts of grubby compromises and he cheats and steals and breaks promises. His alter ego, on the other side of the same coin is the horrible dwarf Alberich, who wants to rape the Rine maidens, but when they reject him, he renounces love and becomes possessed by insane ambition for gold.
This is a brutal sadistic and violent world. It is our world. The world all around us. At the start of the opera we see how the world came about through creation and then, after the initial wrong had been done, all the evil manifesting itself like a disease. On one side of the coin is manipulation and deception , scheming and cheating of the so called civilized society we live in represented by Wotan. On the other side, is the naked violence and terror and coercion of Alberich, who having renounced love by some strange power manages to subdue a whole race of beings who had before lived in a carefree state of nature, the Nibelungs, who only exist to constantly toil and work for Alberich down in the mines, heaping up more and more gold for their evil master. The women are cast to one side - Brunnhilde put on a mountain top surrounded by fire for the first hero that can dare to release her.
This is an utterly inhuman barren wasteland , and Wagner is telling us, this is the hell that we have created around us, because we have renounced love for power. Interestingly, the characters are all gods , giants, dwarfs, or mythical beings of one sort or another, and it is not until the second opera, the Valkyrie that we get human feelings and emotion. Wagner is saying , our society is so disordered , because it has banished the basic and primal human feeling and love within the total order of things, and we are going to reap the consequences.
Wagner gave us the answer in what is probably the greatest single piece of art ever written. Something which transcends even Shakespeare in a sense, because it carries drama into music and then beyond. Everything in the 'Ring' is based on brute force and violence, or on contracts and the law and therefore self interest. Wagner's utterly brilliant insight is to show us that these are two sides of the same coin, so Wotan on behalf of the Gods preserves law and contracts that are carved onto the spear that he holds, but he is himself deeply flawed and is involved in all sorts of grubby compromises and he cheats and steals and breaks promises. His alter ego, on the other side of the same coin is the horrible dwarf Alberich, who wants to rape the Rine maidens, but when they reject him, he renounces love and becomes possessed by insane ambition for gold.
This is a brutal sadistic and violent world. It is our world. The world all around us. At the start of the opera we see how the world came about through creation and then, after the initial wrong had been done, all the evil manifesting itself like a disease. On one side of the coin is manipulation and deception , scheming and cheating of the so called civilized society we live in represented by Wotan. On the other side, is the naked violence and terror and coercion of Alberich, who having renounced love by some strange power manages to subdue a whole race of beings who had before lived in a carefree state of nature, the Nibelungs, who only exist to constantly toil and work for Alberich down in the mines, heaping up more and more gold for their evil master. The women are cast to one side - Brunnhilde put on a mountain top surrounded by fire for the first hero that can dare to release her.
This is an utterly inhuman barren wasteland , and Wagner is telling us, this is the hell that we have created around us, because we have renounced love for power. Interestingly, the characters are all gods , giants, dwarfs, or mythical beings of one sort or another, and it is not until the second opera, the Valkyrie that we get human feelings and emotion. Wagner is saying , our society is so disordered , because it has banished the basic and primal human feeling and love within the total order of things, and we are going to reap the consequences.
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