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Wagner's Ring
By Susan Huetteman

Why?  Why would Willa Cather take Thea from the security of rural Colorado and force her to climb the highest operatic mountain to conquer Richard Wagner's musical masterpiece, Der Ring Des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelungs)?  Or did Cather know that it was her only choice, once she met the intelligent and fascinating Wagnerian diva, Anna Olivia (Olive) Fremstad?  Fremstad was the reigning Wagnerian diva at the Metropolitan Opera from 1903 to 1914.  In writing an article about three American singers for McClure's magazine, Cather interviewed Fremstad. 

When Cather met Fremstad, she saw her focus.  For many years Cather wanted to write about her own artistic growth.  Her earlier fiction drew heavily on her western experiences and personal relationships.  Writing this article for McClure's (published in December 1913) gave Cather greater insights into the development of Thea and The Song of the Lark .  Fremstad and Cather were well-known, accomplished women in their day, and their commonalities went even further.  It turns out that as children, they were both transplanted to the rural West.  In the American frontier territory, they overcame poverty by working while still children in order to pay for their musical training.  Both had the uncompromising strength and determination to become successful artists in their own right.  In an uncharacteristic move, Fremstad allowed Cather into her very private world and the character "Thea" emerged. 

According to Elizabeth Sargent's memoir of Cather, the author "deeply—by her own account—identified with her character, who had many of her traits and had undergone many of her own experiences" (137).  Cather was instantly aware of the parallel of her life with that of Fremstad: transplanted childhoods, personal sacrifices, and artistic struggles.  From their union of spirit, Thea Kronborg was born and would become the goddess of Wagner's Ring.  The Song of the Lark was published in 1915.

Wagner's Reinvention of Opera

Similarly, Richard Wagner (1813-1883) experienced a disrupted and confused childhood.  Following the death of his father, his mother married Ludwig Geyer, rumored to be his real father.  Wagner was transported into an artistic world that captured his imagination and would influence his idea and fixed determination to bring theater to opera.  Opera in the early 19th century was organized as a string of self-contained forms such as aria (a vocal solo), duet, or chorus; these individual "numbers" were held together by dialogue that where either sung (recitative) or spoken.  Wagner would change this structure by unifying the elements.  As Eric Blom observed, under Wagner's artistic influence, "The singers and words would be one" (119).

An accomplished composer, conductor and essayist, Wagner had long wanted to develop a work based on the Norse myth of Siegfried, the mythical figure who defeated the Romans in the Teutoburger Wald, a forest in Lower Saxony (Niedersachsen) in AD 9.  However, excessive personal debt and, finally, his political activism exiled Wagner from his native Germany in 1849. 

Exile, however, permitted a vacuum where Wagner could develop his massive musical drama of good and evil.  Siegfried reemerged as a prelude—Das Rheingold (1854), and then in a trilogy composed of Die Walkurie (1856), Siegfried (1871), and Gotterdammerung (The Twilight of the Gods, 1874).  This four-opera cycle comprised the massive Der Ring des Nibelungen.  Siegfried would portray the decadence of Germany through the lust of gold and deceit of the gods.  Only through a total cleansing could mankind once again prosper.

Wagner spent over 20 years to complete this masterpiece, which has been said to capture all aspects of the human condition.  (See Supplemental Information section for synopsis of the Ring.)  Considered one of the most remarkable and influential works in Western music, the Ring is considered one of the most challenging productions to stage and sing.  (Interestingly, in today's pop culture, the term 'opera' is often associated with the image of a shrieking large-busted woman in a horned helmet and shields—an idea borrowed from Wagner's work.  Hollywood movie director Francis Ford Coppola employed "Ride of the Valkyrie" from Die Walkurie in a famous scene in Apocalypse Now, a classic movie about morality and the Vietnam War.)

At the summoning of 18-year-old King Ludwig II of Bavaria, who became Wagner's royal patron by settling his substantial debts and providing an annual salary, Wagner returned to Germany in 1864. At that point, his artistic and philosophical vision of opera was fixed, transcending the romantic operas that were commonly produced in the 19th century.  Wagner viewed opera as a music drama where poetry, music, staging, orchestra, and art were united, and he would be in absolute control of the production.

Gone would be the shallow, conventional romantic operas.  His singers would not have thin accompaniments, but symphonic orchestras with the dynamics of a Greek chorus.  He redesigned and introduced instruments never before heard in opera.  The orchestra was placed below the stage, so no view of the stage would be obscured.  Although "leitmotiv" (leitmotif) is usually attributed to Wagner's motifs, he preferred the terms "grundtheman" or "hauptmotiv" to respectively describe the basic and primary themes of this works (Huetteman).  In doing this, Wagner employed short musical ideas that the audience would recognize when main characters or items appeared on stage.  He selected singers with exceptional vocal prowess and extraordinary stature.  Not interested in nuance, Wagner instead focused on the command of the dramatic intervals in his music.

In making such artistic leaps, Wagner transformed and furthered the world of opera.  As music historian Donald Grout said, "Above all, his [Wagner's] music impressed itself on the late 19th century because it was able, by its sheer overwhelming power, to suggest or arouse or create in its hearers that all-embracing state of ecstasy, at once sensuous and mystical, toward which all Romantic art had been striving" (567).

Wagner's Will

In Wagner's view, the magnitude of his artistic concept for the Ring called for a venue that was beyond the capability of existing buildings for the performing arts.  He wanted a large hall without aristocratic loges, so that all people would be given equal status.  Influenced by German philosophers Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) and Friedrich Nietzche (1844-1900), Wagner believed that a person's internal Will affected their perception of the external world:  The world is my will and my idea (Honderich, Runes).  Guided by this principle and his desire to fulfill his artistic vision, Wagner embarked on a project to build a new theater in the town of Bayreuth, located in south central Germany (Bavaria); Bayreuth is now the site of internationally famous annual Wagner festivals. 

Wagner's Ring was produced in its entirety at the opening of the Bayreuth Festpielhaus (Bayreuth festival theater) in August 1876.  Comprising approximately 18 hours of music, it was an artistic achievement but a financial failure.  Ironically, Lilli Lehmann, Olive Fremstad's teacher, was on the roster of this musical production.  Twenty years later, in 1896 Wagner's second wife, Cosima, heard Fremstad sing and insisted that she be hired.  Eventually in 1903, Fremstad joined the roster of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.  She sang Sieglinde 32 times before her retirement in 1951.  Her Brunnhilde seemed to "assume gigantic proportions, to dwarf into insignificance everything else which fitted the scene."  Upon Fremstad's departure from the opera world, a tribute to her career was published in Opera News.  Emma Eames wrote,  "Hers [Fremstad's] was a beautiful nature, a beautiful musicianship, and she had conviction, conviction…the spark…the spark! Only a spark can make a star!  Only a spark can make a star in the old days."

Quite appropriately, when the curtain falls on Thea's Sieglinde, her teacher, Harsanyi sighs, "At last…somebody with enough!  Enough voice and talent and beauty, enough physical power.  And such a noble, noble style!…Her secret?  It is every artist's secret…passion" (Cather 396-7).  Thea had captured the golden Ring. 

Susan Huetteman is a retired teacher living in Rhode Island.

Supplemental Information

Synopsis of Der Ring des Nibelungen

Das Rheingold:  A magical gold lies deep in the shimmering Rhine River, guarded by maidens.  Only one with pure thought and deed can possess it.  An evil dwarf tricks the maidens, steals the gold and makes it into a ring and magical shape-shifting helmet.

Die Walkurie:  The envious God Wotan chooses his son, Siegmund, to claim the gold, but his son is side tracked by love and destroyed.  From the encounter, a son, Siegfried, is born and is saved by Brunnhilde because he will honor the gods.  Angry Wotan punishes her with an endless sleep on a rock rimmed by fire.

Siegfried:  The evil dwarfs raise Siegfried, intent on controlling the gold.  But Siegfried claims the ring and helmet, so that he can release Brunnhilde from the god's spell.

Gotterdammerung: Siegfried is slain during the dwarfs' plot to regain the ring and helmet.  Devastated Brunnhilde joins him on the flaming funeral pyre.  The flames overcome all that is old as the Rhine River overflows its banks, reclaiming its gold.  

Wagner's Ring draws from German and Scandinavian mythology in its depiction of the struggle between good and evil.  It has been compared to Homer's Iliad for its similarities to the famous Greek epic poem.  The legends and myths about ancient Scandinavian heroes, gods, and the creation and destruction of the universe were based on the original common mythology of the Germanic peoples; they constitute the primary source of knowledge about ancient German mythology.  Here are some websites to further your knowledge of this subject and Richard Wagner: 

UC Berkeley Online Medieval and Classical Library
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/OMACL/Nibelungenlied/

Select "Preface" and then go to "Introductory Sketch." Offers a thorough explanation of the Siegfried myth by Janet Talley (1997).

Wagner: Zenith of German Romanticism
http://classicalmus.hispeed.com/articles/wagner.html

Contains a biography of Wagner and links to a dozen other Wagner sites.

Upton and Borowski's The Standard Opera Guide.