| Lancette Arts Journal Founded in 2000 |
Feature Stories From our Archives |
January 2005 |
By Alidë Kohlhaas
When the Hummingbird Centre opens its doors to an expectant audience on January 27 for the production of Siegfried, this opera will arrive with quite a bit of baggage, physically, mentally and emotionally. If the Canadian Opera Company (COC) follows through on its promise of the excellent 2004 production of Die Walküre (The Valkyrie), then the five-hour-long work will be worth every second spent on the seat in the Hummingbird, and the baggage worth carrying.
Siegfried, the third opera in Richard Wagner's tetralogy, Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung), or simply called the Ring, is in some ways an enchanting fairytale, a lightly colored idyll placed between the darker dramas of The Valkyrie and Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods). These three are preceded by the introductory Das Rheingold (The Rhinegold), which provides the base for the tale. All four works produce a cycle of events that leads to the downfall of the gods and in the process exposes the natural disposition within us all for greed and self-distraction, but the operas also reveal the saving grace of love.
The Ring carries the name of the Nibelung. It is thus seen as coming from the famous Nibelungenlied, a German epic poem of 12th Century Middle High German written in alliterative metre, also frequently used in Middle English and Celtic poetry. Its action is said to have taken place in the 5th Century AD and has a Christian theme. While Wagner clearly borrowed characters from the Nibelungenlied, anyone familiar with Norse Sagas will recognize that he interpreted his tale—his libretto—for the Ring in the manner of the Edda, the Nordic (Icelandic) epics considered the oldest poems . . .
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