Siegfried's done

Here's the complete opera newbie's review of No 3 in the Ring Cycle - Siegfried.

 Plot summary:   for reasons not entirely clear to me (apart from Wagner wanting to show up a Jewish stereotype as annoying, as well as greedy and incompetent), young Siegfried, the result of twin incest (and actually, it kinda shows - more below), spends a lot of time complaining about how he hates his dwarf "uncle" who raised him since he was a baby.  This seems ungracious, given I don't think there was any scheming motive at the time he found said blond baby just after birth.  (Although it certainly does come later.)  The dwarf, Mime, spends all his time trying to recreate the magic sword from its broken pieces, but his blacksmith skills aren't up to it.   Siegfried, as one who doesn't understand what fear is (reminder: incest), of course is able to remould it and will soon be off to slay a dragon.  End of Act one.

Act Two:  dragon slaying.  Said dragon was formerly a giant who had grabbed the all powerful ring and a bunch of other loot (hello, Hobbit), but I think he chose to convert to dragon, all the better to protect the ring.   (I would have to pay closer attention to the first opera about this, as I was cooking and missed some explanation.)  Anyway, following said dragon slaying with his magical sword (and which, it seemed to me, was dealt with in very perfunctory manner), Siegfried starts understanding birds, one of which tells him there's a sleeping woman (or human?  I would have to double check) on a rock he should probably go visit.   This is, of course, Brunnhilde, left at the end of the last opera sleeping in a circle of fire on top of a mountain as punishment for disobeying Dad Wotan.  This sounds like a good idea to young Siegfried, so it's off to find her, taking the cursed ring with him.

Act Three:   of course, Siegfried is brave enough to walk through the ring of fire to get to the sleeping person in helmet and fake Norse horns, I presume.  Amusingly (well, I thought so), he can see the face  through the helmet and first thinks it's a very handsome man (!).   Who knew this gender diversity/androgynous stuff was in Wagner?  A man ahead of his time.  Or, it could be the incest induced lack of smarts again.  Anyway, as you can guess,  deals with the armour which was presumably preventing him seeing it was a buxom woman, wakes her up, and in classic over-the-top opera fashion, falls immediately madly in love with her.   And she with him, even though she knows (I don't think he does at the end?) she is his aunt.   But hey, it's another case of "love is love" a long time before conservatives decided that "woke is broke".   And by the way, Wotan turned up at the start and confesses that he's had it, he doesn't care if the Gods lose their power any more.   He just seems sick of the power plays, or whatever.   Foreshadowing of the last opera, there.   Anyway, opera ends with Siegfried and his aunt embracing.

My opinion and random thoughts:  Wagner is really good at opening and ending an Act.   In this one, Act One was good, although I started missing the presence of female contribution.   Thrilling musical climate at the end though.   Act Two was really a bit tedious, I thought.   Again, little female contribution and I miss it.

Act 3 though - wow, it's musically fantastic, and makes up a lot for the unexpected tedium of Act Two.   

I wonder if any critics out there don't care for Act Two.

I want to talk more about the character of Mime:   it really seemed to me that he is written like the modern caricature of a Jewish mother.   I see that there have been many words spilt on the question of  the degree to which we should see these dwarf characters as being lightly disguised Jews - but after seeing this, I don't have any doubt at all.   I will read some of the articles that have been written about it, and write more.

There is also something to be said - but I don't really understand what yet - about the psychological aspect of Siegfried wanting to understand what fear is.   Seems facing a dragon didn't do it, but falling in love with an inert buxom woman did, and that makes him ecstatic.  Maybe it was hormonal, or something.   Anyway, I would not be surprised if psychoanalysts have written screeds about this.

As I wrote last week - this is a large part of the appeal of the Cycle:  a weird story that nonetheless makes you think, and you have plenty of time to do it while actually watching the opera.

Anyway, next weekend, it's the End of the World in flames.   Cool. 

Update:  an observation (my bold) from a funny summary of the plot in an article in The Independent:

The love interest is provided by twins who have an incestuous affair, and whose son is fated to marry his aunt. All male members of the cast are notably stupid (especially Siegfried, a dumb hillbilly along the lines of L'il Abner), while the females are nearly all strong and terrifying. The characters' names tend towards the absurd: Wellgunde? Mime? The Gibichungs? You wonder what exactly Richard Wagner was on for the 26 years he took to write it.

Update 2:  Gosh, it's easy to find stuff these days.  From a book The Hard Facts about the Grimm Fairy Tales, I get this:

 

So, the Germans had long been into dumb, naive heroes, and Wagner didn't realise he was continuing it?  How odd, on both counts?  Doesn't exactly fit in with Hitler's fondness for Wagner, either, does it?  

Update 3:   and here's a couple of forum pages of people going back and forth about Siegfried and whether people really assess his character fairly.   Oh, and the whole "free will" thing gets a going over too - a key theme of the Cycle story.

Update 4:   hey, I find support for my problems with Acts 1 and 2, in a recent review:

The problems with “Siegfried” are manifold. The first two acts are unnecessarily long and stubborn and tirelessly dominated by men – it takes more than two hours of the opera’s entire playing time before a female voice can be heard. The portrait of Mime teems with Wagner’s anti-Semitism (while Wagner was resuming work on “Siegfried”, he decided to republish his infamous book “Judentum in der Musik”, this time in his own name, proud of his hatred). And the title character is a person who is difficult to love. Not only can he not feel fear, he also cannot feel compassion, respect, and gratitude, and he barely develops during the trip. Throughout the opera he talks about wanting to learn fear – he can finally experience it for a moment, then he quickly forgets that feeling and returns to be a stupid macho guy.

At the same time, “Siegfried” is interesting in several ways. The opera is a variant of the Oedipus myth: a young hero attacks his grandfather and takes all his strength away, then he gets together with his aunt without knowing the relationship. Fate is cruel and nobody escapes it, just like with Sophocles – but since the tragedy only strikes in the next part, “Ragnarök”, “Siegfried” ends happily in an uncomfortable way.