Theology of Wagner's Ring Cycle II

Theological and Ethical Issues

Richard H. Bell

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781498235730
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Opera Music

Wagner's Ring addresses fundamental concerns that have faced humanity down the centuries, such as power and violence, love and death, freedom and fate. Further, the work seems particularly relevant today, addressing as it does the fresh debates around the created order, politics, gender, and sexuality. In this second of two volumes on the theology of the Ring, Richard Bell argues that Wagner's approach to these issues may open up new ways forward and offer a fresh perspective on some of the traditional questions of theology, such as sacrifice, redemption, and fundamental questions about God. A linchpin for Bell's approach is viewing the Ring in the light of the Jesus of Nazareth sketches, which, he argues, confirms that the artwork does indeed address questions of Christian theology, both for those inside and those outside the church.

1

Introduction to the Theology of the Ring

Wagner had an exalted view of art and despised the commercialisation of opera; but he did not hold to the view of “art for art’s sake.” Rather, he believed his art had the function of transforming not only the human person but also society, and this is especially true of his Ring cycle of four operas: Das Rheingold (The Rhinegold), Die Walküre (The Valkyrie), Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods). Regarding the individual person, his Ring addresses a whole gamut of existential issues, such as abandonment, loneliness, and anxiety. On a corporate level he addresses, among other things, the dangers of power and “capital,” the sickness of society, and the desecration of nature. Hence, his Ring addresses a vast spectrum of ethical issues all of which cry out for a theological analysis. The challenge that the Ring presents is not only to understand the artwork itself but how it may be used to make the world a better place. One could almost apply Marx’s dictim from his Thesis XI on Feuerbach: “The philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways; the point however is to change it.”1 I therefore make the bold suggestion that through an artwork such as the Ring lives can be changed for the better and, in particular, such a work can endow them with genuine significance. All this requires a theological analysis, which this volume will seek to provide.

At the end of volume 1 I raised very briefly the significance of Wagner’s proposed opera Jesus of Nazareth for the Ring. Virtually every single issue of the Ring addressed in this volume is also addressed by the Jesus of Nazareth sketches.2 These two works came to have these common concerns in the following way. In the Autumn of 1848 Wagner composed his outline of the whole Ring drama in the form of his Der Nibelungen-Mythus: Als Entwurf zu einem Drama, (The Nibelungs Myth as a Sketch for a Drama) and then wrote the libretto for Siegfried’s Tod (Siegfried’s Death) which was modified over the next years and renamed Götterdämmerung in 1856. Elements of these initial works fed into the Jesus of Nazareth sketches, which he composed shortly afterwards. But these sketches included so many other insights that then in turn fed into the Ring as it further evolved. Hence, Jesus of Nazareth and the Ring came mutually to inform one another and interpret one another on the issues of “god,” fall, power and “capitalism,” love, sexual ethics and law, death and immortality, freedom and necessity, and finally redemption. In this volume I will examine these themes together with Wagner’s central concern with nature and I will close by considering some essential issues of interpretation of the Ring in relation to myth and allegory. But first I turn to consider more closely the Jesus of Nazareth sketches, which provide a linchpin for a theological interpretation of the Ring.

1. Engels, Feuerbach, 84; MEW 3:7. The theses were written by Marx in Brussels in the spring of 1845 in an old notebook and found after Marx’s death by Engels, forty years later, who prepared them for publication.

2. Note, however, that the theme of nature, so prominent in the Ring (see chapter 4 below) is only discussed briefly in the Jesus of Nazareth sketches.

2

Jesus of Nazareth Sketches

Introduction

We only have “sketches” for this proposed five-act drama Jesus of Nazareth but they are quite detailed. They consists of two parts: first an outline of the drama (I); secondly a theological commentary (II.1), which is then followed by systematically (in canonical order)3 quoting the relevant verses from the New Testament (II.2).4 The drama was composed soon after completing the libretto for Siegfried’s Tod (Siegfried’s Death, November 1848).5 In his autobiography Wagner says the Jesus drama was “sketched out at year-end”6 but the first entry for the Annals of 1849 give “New Testament: sketch of ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ in 5 Acts.”7 Although the Annals were first written as late as February 1868 the date of early 1849 is highly likely. First, from December 1848 Wagner’s writing changed to using the lower case for nouns (with the exception of proper nouns or after full stops) and had moved from the German script to the Latin script; here he was following the example of Jacob Grimm.8 This is precisely the writing style for the Jesus sketches.9 The use of the lower case is found in letters into 1852. There is, however, a lack of consistency in that with writing his Opera and Drama in the Winter of 1850–51 and presenting to the publisher a manuscript with the normal upper case we see corresponding changes in his letters.10 He continued using the lower case into 1852 but reverted to the normal upper case letters in the last months of 1852.11 The second factor for dating is that he discus...