Erda: “My sleep is dreaming;
my dreaming, brooding,
my brooding brings all my wisdom.”
The third opera in the Ring cycle is Siegfried. In 1856, Wagner prepared concurrently two drafts, a complete draft in pencil and a version in ink in which he worked out details of instrumentation and vocal line. The composition of Acts 1 and 2 was completed by August 1857. But Wagner had reached an “artistic” roadblock and left off work on Siegfried to write the operas Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger.
Wagner did not resume work on Siegfried until 1869, twelve years later, when he composed the third act. Letters to friends and family (father-in-law Liszt) suggest that Wagner was struggling with his compositional methods and did not believe he had attained sufficient mastery to enable him to continue with the Ring cycle. As he notes to a friend:
Following his farewell to Brünnhilde [at the end of Die Walküre], Wotan is in truth no more than a departed spirit: true to his supreme resolve, he must now allow events to take their own course [the italics are Wagner’s], leave things as they are, and nowhere interfere in any decisive way; that is why he has now become the “Wanderer”: observe him closely! He resembles us to a tee; he is the sum total of present-day intelligence, whereas Siegfried is the man of the future whom we desire and long for but who cannot be made by us, since he must create himself on the basis of our own annihilation.
Such a profound turning point poses great challenges for the remaining two operas. Wagner almost succumbed to the struggle, but fortunately for us, he went forward and continued while generating two additional masterpieces in the interim (Note: For a more detailed discussion of this artistic “gestation period” there are numerous sources but the Metropolitan Opera Siegfried Program Note may be a good place to start at this link; Metropolitan Opera Program Notes).
But the mark of the twelve-year interval comes in the final scene of Act II involving Siegfried and the forest bird. Set at 2:25.35, Siegfried, Forest Bird Act II Conclusion, this is the final scene of Siegfried Act II from a well received Ring cycle produced in Copenhagen and set with English subtitles in this capture. Siegfried has just slain a dragon, in the form of one of two giants, Fafner (from Das Rhinegold) who in turn had killed his brother Fasolt to gain access to the gold as Wotan’s payment for their building Valhalla. But to protect the gold, Fafner became a dragon, warding off all who came near. So much for wealth.
Anyway, Siegfried tastes Fafner’s blood and is now able to understand nature, including the forest bird who has been following him. The forest bird gives him the key to the next steps on his journey to save the gods, and to Act III. While I am anything but a musical expert, the transition from the forest bird scene at the end of Act II, and the beginning of Act III is supposedly the mark of the development in Wagner’s creative gestation that enabled him to complete the Ring cycle. Putting these two scenes side by side I hope demonstrates the change in Wagner as well as the artistry in two of the greatest Ring cycle scenes.
From the famous and recent Ring production done in Copenhagen, with English subtitles. Siegfried, Act III. This is one of my favorite scenes of the Ring. The music is frenetic, almost desperate, as is the case of the gods. Wotan seeks out Erda, “Earth Mother”, with whom he has sired many children/demigods. Erda sees everything, knows the future, and when awakened, can summon it as an oracle. Wotan seeks her in the opening moments of Act III because he is desperate to know just how bad things really are for the gods. Erda does little to placate him with her look into the future. In fact while she sleeps, her daughters the Norns hold the secret to the future and she tells Wotan to seek them out. From the opening until the end of this scene described is roughly 10 minutes, but well worth playing if you have the time.
Later in Act III, Siegfried will shatter Wotan’s spear with his sword in an encounter that essentially ends things for the gods as the spear has written upon it all of the laws and treaties Wotan and the gods are bound by. The gods are in real trouble.
Finally, Siegfried who knows no fear, makes it to Brünnhilde and awakens her in a rapturous conclusion to Siegfried. You can see these later events by continue to watch the action from the link just above.
