At the dawn of the industrial age, the advent of the mechanical loom revolutionised textile production, making it possible to manufacture fabrics on a large scale and at lower cost, while depriving many artisanal weavers of their livelihoods. Another technological advance, the “programmable” loom operated using punched cards, invented by Lyon-born Joseph-Marie Jacquard, made it possible to create complex textile patterns and foreshadowed, as early as the 19th century, the development of control technologies, making the loom a kind of precursor to computing and the modern computer.
It was against the backdrop of the profound social upheavals brought about by the Industrial Revolution that Richard Wagner composed Der Ring des Nibelungen. Today, exactly 150 years after the first performance of the complete cycle of his magnum opus, the Paris Ring comes to its conclusion with Götterdämmerung. Wagner, who always wrote his own librettos, was the only composer to have a theatre built during his lifetime according to his artistic vision and dedicated entirely to his works. It was at the first Bayreuth Festival, in August 1876, that Siegfried and Götterdämmerung were premiered, and the first complete performance of the Ring was given.
The final part of the Tetralogy was Wagner’s starting point. In 1848, he had initially conceived a single work entitled Siegfried’s Death, a heroic grand opera. Thus, it was with the ending, and with the death of his hero, that the composer first envisioned beginning his Ring. Only later did he add the story of the events that preceded it, eventually arriving at Das Rheingold and the initial theft of the Ring. Wagner had indeed realised that it was impossible to have the complex events leading up to Siegfried’s murder recounted retrospectively: instead, they had to be shown to the audience and brought to life on stage.
In Götterdämmerung, the “magic of musical allusions” (“Beziehungszauber”, in the words of Thomas Mann, a great admirer of Wagner) unfolds to its full effect. To ensure the musical cohesion of the Tetralogy and its approximately sixteen hours of music, Wagner developed what he himself called “motifs of remembrance” (“Erinnerungs-Motive”), a term he had already used in Der fliegende Holländer and which he preferred to the now more commonly used term “leitmotif”. A motif of remembrance can blur different layers of time: it may refer to the past, shed light on the present, or anticipate the future.
In Götterdämmerung, the motifs of remembrance from throughout the Tetralogy are woven into the musical fabric. Those heard, for example, in the “Funeral March” – the orchestral epilogue that follows Siegfried’s death in the penultimate scene – recapitulate the hero’s destiny and downfall. Wagner’s decision to entrust the orchestra with an autonomous commentary on the stage action was a major innovation.
For the Paris Ring, director Calixto Bieito and his team have chosen a discontinuous narrative in which past and future intertwine. Their journey through the Ring began with Das Rheingold, in a “big data” universe where humans had risen to the status of gods, and where greed and selfishness had banished all sense of transcendence. In the militarised and violent world of Die Walküre, compassion was scarce, even though love was able to flourish amid the destruction. At the end, Wotan witnessed the collapse of the digital world he himself had created. In Siegfried, by contrast, nature had reclaimed a devastated world that had become uncontrollable as a result of human manipulation. The forest has been transformed, and the bond between humanity and nature has been broken.
In Götterdämmerung, it is the descendants of the great adversaries Wotan and Alberich who ultimately face one another: Siegfried, Wotan’s grandson, who has definitively stripped his grandfather of his power and who, unknowingly, has “transformed” the Ring, a symbol of power, into a token of love; and Hagen, fathered by Alberich for the sole purpose of carrying out his revenge and reclaiming the Ring. Both have been used as instruments, but a decisive difference sets them apart: Hagen knows his mission, just as he knows the history of the Ring. This advantage allows him to manipulate Gunther and Gutrune, his half-brother and half-sister who sit on the throne of the Gibichungs, at will, just as he will manipulate Siegfried, the newcomer. Siegfried, who has grown up in isolation, rather like Kaspar Hauser, comes into contact here with human society for the very first time, knowing nothing of its rules. It is therefore easy for Hagen, with the help of a “potion of forgetfulness”, to make Siegfried forget where he comes from and who he is, and to turn him into his instrument. Only Brünnhilde, who has long since emancipated herself from her father Wotan, possesses the strength, intelligence and independence needed to stand up to Hagen’s machinations. But by the time she finally understands what is happening, it is too late.
Nous sommes notre mémoire,
nous sommes ce musée chimérique de formes inconstantes,
ce monceau de miroirs brisés.
Jorge Luis Borges, Cambridge
“In Götterdämmerung, the world we have followed over the course of these four evenings disappears, and perhaps humanity disappears with it,” says director Calixto Bieito of the opera’s ending. “But the universe has not necessarily come to an end. Something could come after it, something post-human, natural, technological, or something else for which we do not yet have a name. With Götterdämmerung, our aim was not to present yet another apocalyptic work. We are already constantly surrounded by images and narratives of catastrophes, collapses and extinction. Yet the final bars of Wagner’s music, more ambiguous, stranger and deeper, provide us with no answers.
“What happens in the final music of Götterdämmerung – its surge, its clarity, its liberating atmosphere – is, in our production, pierced by a black hole, like a paradox: the music soars, the world collapses; harmony rises, memory disappears; beauty remains, the universe goes dark. This anti-human ending, in all its desolation, is profoundly human. Everything disappears: matter, humanity, post-humanity, narrative, culture, memory, identity. Nothing remains to be passed on. And, as memory gradually disappears, silence reigns.”
In her recently published book, The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State, American historian Jill Lepore warns us not to allow machines, or the corporations that own them, to control our social and political lives. She challenges us to recognise that, since this imbalance is the product of history and human actions, it is up to us, as human beings, to work towards transforming it. Lepore’s critical analysis does not lead to an apocalypse or a catastrophic scenario, but rather to a call to action: we must reclaim our collective capacity for judgement, our human responsibility, our power to make decisions, democracy and respect for nature.
For Calixto Bieito, Wagner’s Ring will remain as relevant as ever: “The Ring contains a number of fundamental human contradictions: our thirst for power and possession, our capacity to love and destroy, our need to create systems and our tendency to remain trapped within them. Wagner offers us no comforting moral lesson. The Ring does not tell us where we are going. It confronts us with who we are, who we have been and what we might become. All the questions remain unanswered.”
