Episode 4: Finding comedy in Wagner's Ring cycle, with Polly Graham and Sir David Pountney

In this episode, Longborough Festival Opera's Artistic Director Polly Graham joins the acclaimed librettist and opera director Sir David Pountney, who was in the midst of staging his own Ring cycle in Chicago when the pandemic first struck.

The subject of their discussion is comedy in the Ring cycle: where and how we can find humour inside this huge work of art, and how this deepens our understanding of the story.

Thanks to Stuart Essenhigh on trumpet in the introduction.

This podcast is available through most podcast providers including:

Transcript:

Polly Graham

Hello, and welcome to the Longborough podcast. I'm Polly Graham, artistic director of Longborough Festival Opera: a 500-seat homegrown theatre in the Cotswolds. In this episode I catch up with the acclaimed librettist and opera director Sir David Pountney, who was in the midst of staging his own Ring cycle in Chicago when the pandemic first struck.

The subject of our discussion is comedy in the Ring cycle. We look at where and how we can find humour inside this huge work of art, and how this deepens our understanding of the story.

Hi David, it's great to be talking to you. I was thinking about the idea that came to me through Patrick Kavanagh, the Irish poet, that “tragedy”, he said, “is underdeveloped comedy”. And that made me start thinking about the cyclical nature of the Ring cycle, which of course ends in a kind of tragedy - the mess, and betrayal, and vengeance which run all the way through the plot of Götterdämmerung, and leads to Brünnhilde giving back the gold to the Rhinemaidens, taking us back to the beginnings of the story that start four operas earlier in Das Rheingold.

You, David, have always described that opera to me - Rheingold - as a cartoon, and it certainly uses black humour to great effect. So do we perhaps end with tragedy; but because of the cyclical nature begin, or almost develop into, comedy?

David Pountney

I think the first thing to say is that we have to remember that Wagner is, as a writer, a complete dramatist. And nobody could be a complete dramatist without being able to make use of comedy - however serious might be their aim - and we don’t need to look further than Goethe and Shakespeare to prove that point. Secondly, I would actually contest your statement that Götterdämmerung ends in tragedy...

Well, of course, it doesn't - because it is beset with tragedy the whole way through, and nasty things and betrayal et cetera - but of course it concludes with a kind of rebirth.

It concludes with an act of purification, and redemption I guess. But I think it's also worth pointing out that - I mean, if you speak very crudely - two out of the four operas are comedies. I mean, you know, the definition of a comedy is it's a piece with a happy ending.

Rheingold obviously has a kind of sarcastic happy ending. Siegfried definitely has a happy ending: you know, the boy gets the girl at the end of Siegfried - that is the definition of a comedy. So half the Ring actually falls into the category of comic pieces. Though not all the content is that comic. So in the grand structural sense, comedy and tragedy or seriousness are very evenly balanced.

It's true to say that it's not the primal association that many have with the Ring cycle when they think about it.

No that that's because Wagner has this, well, this rather distressing tendency to kind of nullify people's brainpower. Once they get sort of sucked into this massive orgasm of very, very powerful music, you know, the ability to kind of think clearly about what's going on is very quickly overwhelmed.

I totally agree - a great writer must have a whole range of comedy and tragedy at their disposal in order to to be completely fluent in their craft. I was thinking that in a way it's signalled that comedy is going to be something of a key player, at least in part of the storytelling, because the whole genesis of the story of the Ring starts with laughter and mockery: the Rhinemaidens mock Alberich, and that precipitates the entire domino effect of the narrative.

Yes, I mean Alberich jumping out into the waters of the Rhine and having a sneezing fit; and cursing his sneezing. I mean it is a funny scene. Which is a cruel scene, also - I mean of these sort of aristocratic girls, as I see them, you know - people who don't have any jobs to do, that are kind of swanning around in some sort of luxury, actually making sexual fun of this working-class guy, who turns up and is kind of smitten with them.

I mean that is in detail funny. The way that Wagner uses his alliterative rhyming, you know, to make their sarcasm and their cruelty and their wit telling in a humorous way. But it's very cruel hum or. Wagner is something of a specialist in cruel humour.

But that seems to come back a lot later on, in the characterisation of the dynamic between Siegfried and Mime, where there's a lot of abusive humour kind of pervading the entire relationship.

Just staying with Rheingold for a moment. The concept of the dramaturgy of Rheingold is so extraordinary because it's so incredibly original for its time, there is no model for anything like this - and the complexity of the humour of that I think is very well shown by the very end.

This also points to an essential element of comedy, if you like, which is ambiguity. So at the end of the piece the gods are marching into Valhalla - and you know any other composer would have seen this as being, you know, a great triumphal procession scene. Which it is - but something totally Brechtian is injected into this. First of all by the fact that the Rhinemaidens turn up protesting. And that's just part of the drama.

What is totally outside the drama, and is a very Brechtian gesture, is Loge suddenly saying, “hmm, I think this is a load of ****” basically, “I'm watching this from the side-lines”. And he's telling us how we should understand the aim, the ending, of Rheingold. And doing so in a very kind of brilliantly satirical, humorous way - so that when Wagner piles on the C major, as they go marching up into Valhalla, we should be understanding that this is actually a funny, you know, a satirical moment.

He's making fun of them with this C major. Whereas you know, the befuddled Wagernite tends to think “wow, this is great, C major” and it goes on and on and on, building up. But actually the whole point of it is ironic. And that's another kind of humour, ironic humour, which is I think very important to the politics of Rheingold.

Wagner’s mocking the gods as they marched pompously into Valhalla - that would be your reading - and I mean, I can totally see what you're saying. I suppose I wonder what that comedy serves. To me I was thinking that in a way it serves to reveal to Wotan the depth of the problem, and the trap that he's walked himself into.

Well, I see it as being very much, you know, a commentary on something like the Habsburgs, if you like. This kind of aristocracy that was a kind of nomadic source of power ranging in the world, and then walls itself up in a kind of fortress. I mean, it's a sort of a fortress pentagon mentality of rulers who’ve kind of lost touch, and are kind of putting themselves a kind of bunker.

So I guess the humour is saying that what appears to them to be a triumph is in fact a disaster, because they're locking themselves up in a false world. And you know the falsity of that world is going to be revealed in Die Walküre, obviously.

It serves what the character Loge serves, who is an inherently comic character. Not “hahaha” comic, but a satirical figure - and a satirical observer whose mordant wit about the stupidity of the gods is at every moment very very telling. You know, they're even moments when he actually suggests to Wotan, “you know, maybe if we found a way to recompense the Rhinemaidens”, and Wotan is too stupid or blinded by greed to realise that he's been given an opportunity to do something that would work. No no no, he has to have it - his greed doesn't listen to Loge’s much more subtle suggestion.

So Loge as a satiric figure is alerting us all the way through with his little side comments to the flaws of the gods. So the comedy is actually serving a very important purpose, it's telling you “don't get sucked into your Teutonic reverence of Wotan, or Zeus or whatever your...

...god of choice...

...god of choice, yes - because these are flawed people. And humour is a good way of revealing that.

And do you think that has connections with the kind of anarchist Wagner of 1848 and the kind of desire to overturn the orders of the past?

It’s adopting a satirical attitude to the powerful, and especially the powerful who lock themselves away in bejewelled castles.

I mean, one of the big things that gets revealed to us through Rheingold is the inherent hypocrisy of the gods, and their “nobility” is belied by the acts of hypocrisy which you see Wotan embody at every turn.

But there's also, I mean, there are other humorous aspects which are more “knockabout”. Like the whole thing of Alberich turning himself into a dragon, which is obviously a ludicrous dragon because Wotan roars with laughter at it. But you know, it's like a ludicrous theatrical trick, which in fact of course leads directly to his capture. That's Wagner as a kind of flamboyant theatre manager, you know: knowing how to create a bit of anecdotal fun for everybody in the midst of all this serious political drama.

And there’s also social satire in Walküre would you say, like I mean the whole relationship between Fricka and Wotan, you know - she wants him to move into this house so that she knows where he is, and so he's not off, you know, screwing other women. And yet she's taken the moral high ground and is deeply enraged that he's bargained Freia to the giants. Even though he's saying “well yeah, I think you want this house too”, you know. So there's quite a lot of…

Well the interesting thing is that having done the Ring - or almost done the Ring - in Chicago, it's very interesting how the American audience laughs a lot, very freely, without any problem. I mean, they found the whole thing between Fricka and Wotan hilarious. Because of course it is a kind of slightly misogynistic commentary on a classic domestic row: you know, man and wife battling it out in a very recognisable way. And the audience in America loves that. They are just they're not afraid to laugh. So I was already surprised in Rheingold how much laughter there was at this sort of sheer outrageousness of some of these characters’ statements and behaviour - and, why not actually? Why not.

Would you compare that to a more George Bernard Shaw characterization of how you've seen Wagner presented and received in the UK and Europe? Or mainly just use the UK.

I don't think people laugh much in Germany at performances of the Ring. That's just a different attitude, it’s partly this over...making it too sacred. Which clearly Wagner did not really intend. He put a lot of fun into it.

I mean the other kind of thing that one can mention, you know, it's much more, again much more direct, so “knockabout” humour. It's all this stuff in Walküre, between the Valkyries - which is sort of knockabout, very German, “your mare’s brushing up against my stallion, ha ha!” It's very “yo ho ho”, you know…

Jolly hockey sticks…

Jolly hockey sticks, exactly. But it's there.

How do you deal with that? I would find that terrifying to have to stage.

Well you know, you just go for it. It's just like them in their locker room.

So there's the political satire, there’s the social satire - there’s an almost pantomime vocabulary, which is Alberich showing off with his newfound wealth, and turning himself into a dragon, and then, well, turning himself into a toad and then getting caught.

You see the thing it reminds me of is something like the language of Rowlandson - Georgian British, cartoonist, political cartoonist - where all the aspects of the story are encapsulated in a kind of satirical image. So if you want to see love balanced out with gold, you stand a pretty woman there and you build a gold pile in front of her, and you say “when I can't see the girl, the gold’s worth more than the girl”. So this is you know, this is taking that whole issue of money/power versus love, and realising it in a very cartoon-like image. And that is essentially funny. Because it is radically oversimplified.

And it's funny but it gives way to something incredibly disturbing…

Yes it’s also distasteful. Even Wotan finds it distasteful, it's humiliating.

But then Siegfried opens up into really such a wealth of, I would say, different uses of comedy. I think you get echoes of the cartoon world which we've had in Rheingold, and also echoes of a pantomime world - like the dragon.

Well the whole forging of the sword. I mean, you know, kind of puffs of flame, and spurts of smoke, and I mean, of course I can't help now talking to some extent of that in reference to my own production of it. Actually what happened with Siegfried was - I mean, each of these pieces was done within the same framework, but very differently.

Siegfried was entirely seen through Siegfried’s eyes. Through the eyes of a child. So it was all about a child growing up. So the backdrop of the first act was a child's drawing - of dragons, and the forest - and all the furniture was huge. So Siegfried, obviously played by an adult tenor, was in a playpen about this tall. So the only person who fitted this furniture was Wotan, as the Wanderer, because he came in on stilts. So suddenly, he was able to sit at the table and be exactly like, you know - the whole place belonged to him.

So what Wagner does, as I use this phrase “the complete dramatist” - I mean with this forging of the sword, an extraordinary sequence. I mean, he creates a kind of pantomime scene. I mean, it is actually the bakery scene from the pantomime, isn't it? It's the bags of flour, and you know the cream pies, falling on the floor and all of this kind of stuff. Brilliant theatrical humour.

And so actually our idea was, which made it very funny to the American audience, was that all of this was being organised by the Wotan. And so what happened was every time he needed an anvil or the bath to put the sword in, an Amazon package arrived. Huge! Containing a giant child's toy anvil set, bright blue, and yellow and green - just like, you know, I’m sure your kids have sort of cookery sets. So all of this was sort of the world of the child. And it was great fun.

Otherwise this scene, if you kind of I think misread it, you see some sort of fascist hero limbering up. It's borderline a bit. But I think if you give the humour its freedom, then it's about a boy growing up.

When I was reading it again, I felt like Siegfried could almost be like Obelix, you know. It's like he’s fallen into the magic potion, he's so strong - obviously he has of course also the quality of hyper-innocence which leads to lots of other comedy moments later on in the piece. It's disturbing but it's also funny. The really dysfunctional and abusive kind of foster parent/child relationship that Mime and Siegfried share: Mime’s always kind of feigning affection or care for Siegfried, but actually all he wants ultimately is to groom him to achieve the capture, or the recapture of the gold. But it's kind of funny, you know, the mixing of the potion while Siegfried’s forging the anvil…

They're both creating the means of the other's death. Mime is putting all kinds of disgusting things into this potion that he's making, and it's brilliant and it's absurd - but you know, you don't forget somehow that at the root of this is something vile. I mean Siegfried doesn't realise his sword is going to kill Mime of course, but Mime definitely, you know, is planning Siegfried’s death. So, you know, it's quite a Joe Orton scene.

Yeah, or Harold Pinter.

A bit more lively than most Harold Pinters.

So what about the Wanderer in Siegfried? Paul Carey Jones said a very interesting thing about this the other day when we were talking about it. He said “well, it's a bit like Wotan’s, you know, he's still Wotan but he's assumed this new identity, and this new spirit with which he's moving through the world, and it's like he hasn't changed his clothes or had a wash in 20 years”. And I can totally see that the Wanderer is there to serve some quite dark and strong dramatic moments in Siegfried.

I mean there's that amazing scene with Alberich where you can just imagine Alberich doesn't ever need to even look at him: the light and the dark Alberichs are finally coming together, and having this brilliant reversal of what happened in Rheingold. But I don't know, when the Wanderer’s talking to Siegfried it's almost like it's like a Bob Dylan version of Wotan - because he speaks in a very cryptic kind of poetic manner.

Wotan swims into the world of Siegfried and he has no opponents. So he can afford to be laid-back and humorous. He sits down with Mime and plays this whole game - the riddle game - and so on and he, you know, it's all terribly unfair, because obviously, Wotan’s going to win. And he knows that. But at the same time he's creating the person who's going to bring about his own demise, I mean, who’s going to break his spear. Which is you know, as good a Freudian image of the father-son relationship that you can ask for.

And it is done in a very, you could say very polished, humorous way. So the Wanderer is a very polished, humorous character. Benign, witty - enjoying his superiority, really. He doesn’t have to deal with Fricka or any troublesome truth-teller. And of course, he fixes the whole thing. I mean, in my production he does.

He's kind of got a newfound freedom obviously because he doesn’t have all of the baggage of the establishment.

He's being a dosser. So all of this has a kind of gentle - what's the word - Sylvan humour. The joy of Siegfried is that it's bathed in this affectionate musical light. The whole tenor of Siegfried is this golden glow of forest light and murmuring and leaves - nature. Even the threat of the dragon and so on is kind of humorous, it's pantomime.

Well the dragon - I was thinking about this and I wondered what you thought about this - how much humour do you think there is in the dragon? I mean, again that's almost a classic pantomime scene - like “watch out he's going to eat you” and the holy fool has no idea how dangerous he is because he can't feel fear. But also the incessant sleeping of the dragon, and that's kind of funny - but also what that may be says about the power you get when you get the gold, it's actually very boring. It's the thrill of the chase of the gold, which is obsessional and energising.

But I think again, I come back to the thing about Wagner the complete dramatist. I mean, this is nothing to do with humour now - but it's very very telling I think of his imagination and his attention to psychological detail that in the story of these giants, which essentially is a very kind of cartoony story - this kind of language - that he takes the trouble to depict Fasolt’s genuine longing, yearning for Freia’s beauty. And just in a few phrases it’s done, very very subtly. And then he writes a really beautiful scene for Fafner’s death. That's where he's so miles ahead of any other person writing around that period, you know - because he just captures the human detail, the psychological detail of the dying giant. He doesn't just let him go [dying scream]; he comes out and he says who are you? What have you done? I think the thing that characterises Siegfried is affection.

Well it is fundamentally an incredibly affirming experience to hear that music and to go through the love duet at the end of act three.

In that duet, in that huge long duet, for Siegfried and Brünnhilde, at the end of Siegfried. I mean, there is a lot of very telling human detail in depicting two people who don't know what to do with their first love. So, you know, there is a lot of humour, very gentle humour, inherent in that scene. And I actually gave them each a bedroom to go into on either side of the stage. “I don’t know what to do with this boy in my life; I'm supposed to be a goddess, how can I deal with a boy when I’m a goddess?”.

So that kind of teenage angst - “my god this is my first boyfriend, what am I doing” - it doesn't make you laugh, but it's - you know at the end they're like, it's a boy and girl marching off: it's delightful. It doesn't need to be pompous or bombastic or all those things that Wagner often is.

Of course we haven't talked about what I think one is the sort of comedic high points of Siegfried which is the amazing duet between Alberich and Mime. Which ends up with a kind of bun fight - a sort of classic...cream cake.

But also the moment where Siegfried’s tasted the blood of the dragon - am I right about this? - he tasted the blood of the dragon which gives him the power to understand the birds, but also to suddenly understand the subtext of what anyone says. So Mime tries to continue with the old “I'm a loving foster parent” act, but anything that comes out his mouth is…

Right and he has that lovely bit where he says, very kind of smilingly; “I’d just like to cut...your...head off!” So as though he's saying, you know, stroke your back - he's actually saying “I want to cut your head off”. That's just a very funny idea.

Do you think there’s any humour in Götterdämmerung?

Gosh you would really would have to kind of…

Both

Delve very deep.

And that was where we left it: with the decision not to delve into the darkness of Götterdämmerung where there is very little light relief. My thanks to David for sharing his wonderful thoughts and ideas.