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By Root 5304 0

stories is what concoctions of artifice they are; how unrelated to any genuine outward or inward reality; how wilfully their familiar archetypal imagery is manipulated to play on the emotions of their audience, with its effect reinforced at every point by music of memorably emotive power. They provide a perfect definition of what is meant by sentimentality in its most sensational guise: using an outward show of much of the most basic symbolism programmed into the human imagination to trigger off the desired emotional response. Yet most revealing of all is how nothing more effectively achieves such a response than the spectacle of a beautiful, virtuous heroine, the embodiment of the feminine value, the anima and soul of mankind, being oppressed, imprisoned, degraded and finally put violently to death.

Wagner: World ending without redemption

Another mid-nineteenth-century opera composer who expressed this darkness in a very different way, was Richard Wagner, Verdi's almost exact contemporary. The single most ambitious achievement of nineteenth-century opera was the four-part Ring cycle, Der Ring des Nibelungen, that extraordinary creation inspired by Norse and Teutonic myths, which Wagner nevertheless transmuted through the force of his fantasy into something entirely his own.

The prologue, setting the underlying theme of the story, is Das Rheingold. In the mysterious, half-lit world below the waters of the Rhine, the unconscious, the three Rhinemaidens sing of the glowing golden treasure, consciousness. Whoever can make a ring from the gold will be master of the world, but to possess it must forego love. The dwarfish Alberich agrees and seizes the gold. As in that later pseudomythic epic Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, the ring, which gives its bearer untold power without love, is the power of the ego. But, despite the claim that the holder of the ring will exercise such power, it is notable that not one of those who possess it in the drama which follows seems able to use it to any effect whatever. Its power is all an illusion: its symbolism strangely empty.

We then see Wotan, the king of the gods, with his wife Fricka, gazing in wonder at the new home of the gods, Valhalla, but knowing that a terrible price must be paid to the giants, Fafner and Fasolt, who built it. The giants must be given Freya, the goddess of eternal youth. Wotan tricks the ring from Alberich and persuades the giants to accept it and the gold instead. So great is the greed the ring inspires, they immediately fight over it. Fafner kills Fasolt and disappears to brood over his accursed treasure. The story proper can now begin. At the start of Die Valkure, the first of the three main dramas, we learn that Wotan still dreams of getting the ring back, although it plays no part in the action which follows. This begins when we see Wotan's son Siegmund, on the run from his enemies, taking refuge in the hut of Hunding and his wife Sieglinde. She and Siegmund drug Hunding into unconsciousness with a potion and run away together. When Hunding awakes, determined to pursue Siegmund and kill him, Wotan orders the battle-maiden Brunnhilde, one of the Valkyries, to protect Siegmund, but Hunding manages to kill him. Wotan then kills Hunding. Brunnhilde tells Sieglinde to escape into the forest, and Wotan punishes her by decreeing that she is no longer a goddess, but must fall into a trance surrounded by a ring of fire. She can only be woken by a hero fearless enough to penetrate the flames.

At the start of Siegfried, the second drama, we learn that Sieglinde has died giving birth to the hero, Siegfried, who is without fear. Siegfried grows up and slays Fafner, now transformed into a monstrous dragon, thus winning the ring and also the knowledge that he must rescue Brunnhilde. Because he is fearless, Siegfried can penetrate the flames. He wakes Brunnhilde with a kiss and they joyfully declare their love. Much of this central episode, the victory of the hero over the monster, thus winning the treasure and union with the anima, is taken directly from the story of