Das Rheingold: Commentary
Wagner wrote the Ring Cycle backward. He planned a single opera about Siegfried as he appears in the first half of the medieval
Nibeglungenlied, decided to also write an opera about the youth of Siegfried as told in Norse material, then decided that to cover that fully, he needed another opera on the life of Siegfried’s father Sigmund, and yet another opera on the origins of the Ring and the dragon whom Siegfried fights.
Although Wagner takes most of his material from Norse sources, he uses Germanic forms for the names. Here is a table of the cast members of
Das Rheingold in order of appearance, omitting only the three Rhine maidens who are Wagner’s own invention, along with the Norse names of the characters and some notes on the names.
Characters:
German/Wagnerian Name
Norse Name
Commentary
Alberich
Andvari
albe ‘elf’ +
rich ‘king’;
andvari ‘careful’
Fricka
Frigg
The form
Fricka is an invention of Wagner or some contemporary folklorist. In southern Germanic mentions and Old English mentions the wife of Wotan/Óðinn is Freia.
Wotan
Óðinn (Odin)[/SIZE]
< Proto-Germanic
*Wōđanaz ‘Ecstasy’.
Freia
Freyja
‘Lady’
Fasolt
Hreiðmarr (Hreidmar)
In the Norse version Hreiðmarr is the father of Fafnír and Regin. The name
Fasolt is Wagner’s invention.
Fafner
Fafnír
Froh
Freyr
‘Lord’
Donner
Þórr (Thor)
< Germanic *
Þunraz meaning ‘Thunder’ and also cognate with the modern English word.
Loge
Loki
Loki survives only in Scandinavian sources. Wagner invents the German form
Loge and uses the guess of some commentators that Loki might be connected with fire.
Mime
Reginn (Regin)
Wagner uses the name
Mime from the German-influenced
Þiðreks saga where Mime is Sigurð/Siegfried’s foster father and Mime’s brother Reginn is the dragon as opposed to the standard Norse story in which Reginn is Sigurð’s foster father and his dragon brother is Fáfnir.
Erda
Jǫrd (Jörd)
‘Earth’
For the text of the opera in English and German, see
http://larryavisbrown.homestead.com/...ing0_intro.htm
For the main Norse source in English, see
http://www.marxists.org/archive/morr.../chapter14.htm .
For Tolkien’s recreation of this material, see
The Legend of Sigurd & Gudrún, “Upphaf (Beginning)” and chapter “I Andvari’s Gold”.
Wagner introduces the idea that Alberich/Andvari gains the gold from which he forges the Ring of Power from the Rhine where it has previously been only a plaything of the nymphs of the Rhine. To do this, Alberich must forswear love forever. Love here seems to be identical with carnal lust. And the river nymphs are so cruel and heartless in their teasing of the ugly dwarf Alberich that one almost feels that it serves them right when Alberich turns on them and steals their gold.
Wagner weaves in parts of a Norse tale of a giant trying to trick the gods by building a citadel in exchange for Freyja as his wife and the sun and moon. Wagner has two giants, Fasolt and Fafner, and the ending is quite different. It is to gain the Ring of Power that Wotan goes to Alberich’s domain, ostensibly to regain it for the Rhine nymphs but really, for himself, to increase his own power.
Nibelungen in most sources is the family name of the royal house who rule the Burgundians from the city of Worms. But in the
Nibelungenlied the Nibelungs are originally a northern people over whom Siegfried rules of whom at least some are dwarfs. This led some scholars to believe that the Nibelungs were originally dwarfs in lost sources. Wagner accepted this theory in his opera, but few if any modern commentators accept it. It is the
Nibelungenlied that garbled the story by confusing the hereditary treasure of the Nibelungen dynasty of Worms with the originally unrelated treasure which Siegfried won from a dragon but which later would have been reckoned part of the Nibelungen hoard.
In the Norse sources the only power that Andvari’s Ring has is by unexplained means to increase the treasure hoard of its owner. Tolkien ascribes such a power to the seven dwarf-rings.
Wotan takes Alberich by surprise and makes him his prisoner, to be ransomed only by giving up his treasure and the Ring. It is unexplained why Wotan can do this but later cannot directly or indirectly similarly obtain the Ring from its owners. Alberich, on being set free, lays a curse on the Ring.
And so the giants Fasolt and Fafner gain the Ring and immediately begin quarrelling over it. Fafner kills Fasolt and two operas later will appear again as a dragon in a den, lying on a golden hoard. Similarly Tolkien’s Sméagol kills his friend Déagol over the Ring and regresses into a cannibalistic wretch whom most would not now recognize as one who was once a hobbit.
Tolkien quotes his Swedish translator Åke Olhmarks as saying:
.... which was originally forged by Volund the master-smith, and then by way of Vittka-Andvare passed through the hands of the mighty [Æsir] into the possession of Hreidmar and the dragon, after the dragon’s fall coming to Sigurd the dragonslayer, after his murder by treacherous conspirators coming to the Burgundians, after their death in Atle’s snake-pit coming to the Huns, then to the sons of Jonakr, to the Gothic tyrant Ermanrik, etc.
Völund’s ring is different ring, given to him by his wife, not forged by him. There is no story of any ring connected with Völund’s son Witige who appears as a mighty hero not to be identified in any way with the dwarf Andvari who must have been born much earlier. (See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wudga .) The Nibelungen Ring ceases to be mentioned in medieval texts after it was worn by Siegfried/Sigurð. Mentions of the Ring here after Sigurð’s murder are bogus, save that the characters referenced appear in tales that are linked to the Sigurð story.
Ohlmarks indeed did not know what he was talking about and later became much worse.
A review of the film will follow once I have seen it, later today.