“Nothing but duets!”
Originally published in a Deutsche Grammophon 2-CD set: Wagner Duets, DG 480 7308.
Looking back at Tristan und Isolde twenty years after its composition, Wagner told his wife Cosima: “My model was Romeo and Juliet – nothing but duets!” He was invoking Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi which he had conducted many times as a young man. Indeed, there had been much in the Italian master’s legacy that had impressed the young Wagner, including the “long, long, long melodies” that Verdi described, and the technique of melodic sequence in which a phrase is repeated with rising pitch and heightened effect. The erotic potential of such methodology is famously exploited in the ‘night of love’ in the second Act of Tristan. Almost everything in Tristan und Isolde is viewed from the perspective of the two lovers, including the warning call of Brangäne – more lullaby than alarm as it floats through the night. We hear it, so to speak, through the ears of a man and a woman for whom no world exists outside themselves.
Tristan and Isolde (Life), by Rogelio de Egusquiza, who was a close Spanish acquaintance of Richard Wagner.
While Tristan and Isolde are unique in Wagner’s oeuvre in seeking a perfect union beyond the illusory world of appearances, redemptive relationships are the norm in many of the composer’s works ranging from Die Feen, written at the age of twenty, to Parsifal completed at the age of sixty-eight.
The moving duet that accompanies the first meeting of Senta and the Dutchman sets a benchmark for redemptive heroines faithful unto death. The Dutchman’s intense feeling for her, he realises, is not love but a longing for salvation and an end to eternal wandering. For her part, Senta wants only to be the vehicle of his salvation. Wagner’s fascination with the redeeming quality of a woman’s love had its roots in the Faustian idea of ‘Das Ewig-Weibliche’ – ‘the eternal feminine’. This also had been a theme of earlier literary and dramatic works including the ‘rescue operas’, of which Beethoven’s Fidelio became the most famous example.
A more enigmatic relationship is that between Elsa of Brabant and the shining knight of the unknown name. If the Grail is in the world but not of the world, then so too is its servant, the swan knight Lohengrin. Elsa needs him to defend her honour but, in return, he seeks a love that is perfect trust. Their marriage prospects are doomed from the start because, to put it mildly, Lohengrin is of the spirit and Elsa of the flesh. It is not Elsa’s frailty that is the issue; her curiosity about his identity (though exploited by her enemies) is entirely human. Rather, it is the impossibility of reconciling the irreconcilable that lies at the heart of this beautiful and poignant opera. The exquisite melody of Lohengrin and Elsa on their wedding night, which begins as an expression of Elsa’s love and gratitude but is soon riddled with doubts, was one of the first musical phrases written for the work. It was jotted down in 1845 before a word of the poem was written. So, even at that early stage, Wagner was imagining the characters and situations in terms of the music. Notwithstanding its great beauty, Lohengrin is Wagner’s most tragic opera.
In the same year in which Lohengrin was conceived, 1845, Wagner sketched out a detailed prose draft about the cobbler poet Hans Sachs and the Mastersingers of Nuremberg. More than twenty years would pass before this glorious work could come to fruition, but its duets in particular illustrate a key feature: the role of Sachs in setting aside his own feelings to facilitate the relationship of Walther and Eva. No lesson in artistic inspiration could be more telling than that between Sachs and Walther, and no extended dialogue more interesting and filled with beauty. Even the little scene of Eva and her shoe – a parable about coping with her feelings for Walther – is sublime. Sachs understands very well what is troubling her, but he plays along, ignoring her reaction when Walther appears at the door in splendour, like another Lohengrin. And all the while the orchestra, tongue-in-cheek, combines a homely little refrain with shrewd musical commentary. Pure genius!
The seduction of Tannhäuser by Venus, and the knight’s anxiety to return to the outside world shows the young Wagner at his musically most enticing. Thirty years later, we encounter this quality again in the hothouse atmosphere of the second Act of Parsifal. Now though, it is the seducer, Kundry, who is in anguish at being forced by Klingsor to entrap the knights and thereby perpetuate her own suffering. Like the Dutchman she too wanders eternally, unable to find rest. “Only he that rejects you will set you free” says Klingsor and, as it transpires, Parsifal, made wise by compassion, becomes the vehicle for her redemption. In Parsifal the destructive power of desire is quelled by the redeeming power of compassion, and there is no more beautiful expression of this than the scene between Gurnemanz and Parsifal in the flowery meadow on Good Friday, the ultimate day of compassion when humanity had been redeemed and, like a new Garden of Eden, nature too had regained its innocence.
In keeping with the universal scope of Der Ring des Nibelungen, some scenes reflect the greatest contrasts in relationships of pairs of characters. From Das Rheingold we can eavesdrop on husband and wife, Wotan and Fricka, and learn of his ambitions and her misgivings, especially about his shameful deal for the building of the fortress Valhalla and his pursuit of power at the expense of all else. Two contrasting scenes are to be found in Die Walküre: the rhapsodic encounter between Sieglinde and Siegmund, long separated twins of Wotan by a human mother, whose mutual rediscovery is like the return of spring after the frosty wintertime; and the deeply moving parting between father and daughter – Wotan and the Valkyrie Brünnhilde. We witness the softening of Wotan’s punishment of his disobedient child, the depth of his love for her and his decision to leave her locked in sleep, encircled by a magic fire impassable to all but the noblest hero. In the ecstatic ending of Siegfried, the now mortal Brünnhilde joins her awakener and lover, the young Siegfried in foretelling the end of the gods and the dawn of a new order. In Götterdämmerung we witness Siegfried’s vulnerability in a vicious world and the final struggle between the forces of power and love. Wagner’s absolute mastery of his dramatic, vocal and orchestral resources is demonstrated in the extraordinary dream-like scene between Alberich and his son Hagen, personifications of lovelessness, as events move inexorably towards the end of the gods and the redemption of the world from the curse of the ring: the curse of power over love.
Peter Bassett
who compiled the recording in 2013 for Universal Music Australia.
With excerpts of recordings by Dernesch, Domingo, Ligendza, King, Fischer-Dieskau, Janowitz, Kollo, Nilsson, Vejzović, Nimsgern, Hofmann, Moll, Veasey, Vickers, Stewart, Crespin, Thomas, Brilioth, Kelemen, Ridderbusch, Price, Studer, Weikl and Windgassen. Conducted by Gerdes, Jochum, Karajan, Kleiber, Kubelik and Sinopoli, and with the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Bayrerischer Rundfunk, Berliner Philharmoniker, and Staatskapelle Dresden.
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