Organization

Conductor

Valery Gergiev

Singer

Tenor

Mikhaïl Vekua

Siegfried

Baritone

Yevgeny Nikitin

Gunther

Bass

Mikhail Petrenko

Hagen

Roman Burdenko

Alberich

Soprano

Tatiana Pavlovskaya

Brünnhilde

Evgenia Muraveva

Gutrune

Mezzo-soprano

Olga Savova

Waltraute

Contralto

Yekaterina Sergeyeva

First Norn

Irina Vasilieva

Second Norn

Zhanna Dombrovskaya

Third Norn

Woglinde

Wellgunde

Flosshilde

Orchestra

Orchester des Mariinski-Theaters

Zaryadye Hall

Richard Wagner "The Death of the Gods" Tetralogy "Ring of the Nibelung", part IV

Moscow

Russia

Grand Hall

Richard Wagner "The Death of the Gods" Tetralogy "Ring of the Nibelung", part IV: Excerpts from Der Ring des Nibelungen Wagner,Richard (+1 More)

Public

Excerpts from Der Ring des Nibelungen

The Twilight of the Gods

Approved

“My music is terrible, it is a whirlpool full of horror and greatness!” - Wagner said about the main creation of his life, the gigantic opera saga Der Ring des Nibelungen. These words especially accurately characterize the last opera of the cycle - "The Death of the Gods". From her, or rather from her text, Wagner began work on The Ring; then his drama was called The Death of Siegfried. Both titles warn: there will be no happy ending, Nibelheim will defeat Valhalla. In the "Death of the Gods" hatred, envy, deceit, jealousy, aggression reign, here they manipulate, betray and kill with a stab in the back. Prophetic norns spin the thread of inevitable fate, and the forces of darkness weave intrigues against the forces of light. Music, as always with Wagner, serves the drama; moreover, the drama is primarily concentrated in it, which is why the shock from the "Death of the Gods" is guaranteed even in the absence of a stage incarnation. There are a lot of dark tones in the orchestration: low brass, brass with mutes. Wagner is harsh with his listeners, but still not merciless: there are many very bright pages in the score. The symphonic painting "Siegfried's Journey along the Rhine" was painted with fresh, cheerful colors. At the opposite pole - "The Funeral March for the Death of Siegfried", the tragic culmination of the entire Wagnerian epic. Both the symphonic episodes and the score as a whole are permeated with leitmotifs – capacious musical emblems with which the composer-reformer consistently supplied heroes, families, objects, natural phenomena, mental states and even philosophical categories. There are only a dozen new leitmotifs in The Death of the Gods, the rest - about a hundred - are already well known to those who have not missed the previous parts of the quadriptych.
At the very end of The Death of the Gods, a melody sounds, which is commonly called the leitmotif of love-redemption. Wagner had used this theme only once before, in Valkyrie, when the completely desperate Sieglinde was foretold the birth of the hero-savior, Siegfried. At the end of the story, Siegfried dies, Valhalla burns, and "from the ruins of the collapsed palace, men and women, deeply shocked, look at the flaring heavenly fire." And then the brilliant playwright Wagner says his last word: the orchestra very quietly plays gentle major music, full of love, consolation and hope. Humanity continues to live.

English

Performance credits (Cast & Crew )

Ensemble