Reenactment of Wagner's Solo Reading Performance of Rheingold

Dominik Frank (fimt – Research Institute for Music Theater Thurnau, University of Bayreuth)

The Research Institute for Music Theater Thurnau has joined forces with the orchestra Concerto Köln and the conductor Kent Nagano to find out, within the framework of the DFG-knowledge-transfer-project Wagner singing in the 21st century – historically informed, which historical singing techniques and style characteristics can be used for a historically informed performance of the Ring of the Nibelung within the framework of the project Wagner Readings1 and which aesthetic and content-related implications they contain. The project Wagner Readings, founded by Concerto Köln, the conductor Kent Nagano and now in cooperation with the Dresden Music Festival, has set itself the goal of extending historically informed performance practice, which is now well established in early music, to the repertoire of the Romantic period – and here in particular to The Ring of the Nibelung, which transcends all genre and format boundaries. The first goal is concert performances of all four Ring music dramas. Parts of this project are the reconstruction of historical instruments, scientific research on historical tempi and playing styles as well as an independent sub-project on pronunciation norms of the 19th century. Closely connected to the project is the aforementioned DFG-knowledge-transfer-project, which the Research Institute for Music Theater Thurnau (fimt) of the University of Bayreuth has acquired together with Concerto Köln. Within the framework of “Wagner singing in the 21st century – historically informed”, all questions of performing and singing are addressed. Based on the three aspects of speaking, singing and historical psychology, a program has been developed which offers the singers of the concert performances a variety of methods and possibilities to incorporate historical information into their performance of the parts. The most important aspect, according to Wagner, is the starting point of the musical design basing on the scenic-dramatic declamation and presentation. The model and paradigm for this kind of role design was the singer Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient, who for Wagner was the model and ideal of the scenic-dramatic interpretation.2 A detailed description and scientific evaluation of this work will be made available in the final volume of the project. The digital essay presented here is devoted to the first sub-project, a reenactment of a solo reading performance of the Rheingold text, as Richard Wagner himself often performed and used as a starting point for his composition. The reenactment took place on Sept. 15, 2021, at Thurnau Castle, the seat of the research institute. This digital essay documents the reenactment both as an overall recording and in thematically focused excerpts that illuminate individual research findings. At the end of the essay, there is also a video showing the individual stages of implementation of the results with the singers of the three Rhinemaidens using an excerpt from the first picture of Rheingold.

Figure 1. Eva Vogel (Floßhilde), Ida Aldrian (Wellgunde), Ania Vegry (Woglinde) during general rehearsal in Cologne 2021
(c) Heike Fischer

I. Starting points

The starting point for this reenactment were the research results of Martin Knust, who in his book Sprachvertonung und Gestik in den Werken Richard Wagners – Einflüsse zeitgenössischer Rezitations- und Deklamationspraxis3 (Speech Setting and Gesture in the Works of Richard Wagner – Influences of Contemporary Recitation and Declamation Practice) explained how strongly Wagner was influenced in his compositions by the theatrical art of his childhood and youth and the style of performance and recitation anchored in it. The theatrical-dramatic (and only secondarily musical) focus is also found in Wagner's high regard for the singer Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient, whom he admired above all for her perfect acting-psychological grasp of her roles.4 Thus it was clear that the research of Wagner's singing ideal in the context of the project should start from such a reenactment (ostensibly without singing) of one of Wagner's solo reading performances.5 In the following, Martin Knust's research findings on this topic are briefly summarized before the reenactment is described in the next section.

Wagner himself was an enthusiastic and – if one believes contemporary reports – gifted reader. For Wagner, "reading aloud was a natural part of his everyday life. [...] His recital was essentially modeled on the acting declamation."6 Wagner's reading repertoire included his own dramatic poems as well as theoretical and autobiographical writings, complete dramas by other authors, novels, and philosophical texts. For drama lectures, among other things, an extensive Shakespeare recitation cycle, readings of plays by Schiller, Goethe, Calderón de la Barca, Lope de Vegas, and the "Greek classics from Aeschylus to Aristophanes"7 have been handed down. In addition, Wagner recited Homeric epics, texts of Indian antiquity, the Middle Ages, several times the novel Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, as well as philosophical texts by Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Plato and Aristotle.8 Wagner's reading style was characterized by a "dramatic-actor aplomb"9 that "certainly owed itself to the pathos of German stage declamation."10 Especially the distinction of the different roles by "art of characterization was generally praised."11 Eduard Devrient, for example, describes Wagner's performance style for Rheingold as follows: "There is to be admired in the various figures of the mermaids, dwarfs, giants, of Locke [=Loge], an [...] extraordinary power of characterization, and Wagner performs them with a virtuosity of presentation [...]."12

Knust argues the thesis, which has not yet emerged in research, that "it could have been [the] recitations [...] of his own poetry as a creative, artistically necessary process for him in the conception and composition of his dramas."13 According to Knust, Wagner "[i]n reciting [the Ring], he goes through his monumental work several times coram publico in order to test the dramatic effect on himself. [...] He will have shaped these lectures with all the performing and vocal means at his disposal. In the reading aloud, the temporal proportions of the work became apparent for the first time. In addition to the duration of sequences in the small, Wagner will also have gained clarity about those in the large."14 Wagner's creative process thus looked as follows: "The fixation of a mimic action – which [...] begins with the textbook – is followed at the beginning of the compositional creative process by the transfer into the imagined dramatic character. [...] From the sound, rhythm and tone of the spoken language, the singing voice is derived when the verses of the vocal text are set to music, and thus the 'word-tone melody' is obtained, which [...] is the starting point for the further composition".15

Starting from the ideal of the poet and performer in personal union16 and the ideal of "expropriation of self",17 the complete absorption of the performer in a character, Wagner thus sets to music the intuitively gained insights into the respective characters. He himself describes this process as follows: "Thus, by virtue of my intuition, I succeeded in putting myself completely into the nature of the mime, but only for the state into which he fell during the portrayal as a result of his successful expropriation of self, [the state] of ecstasy."18 Wagner refers to the writing down of this interpretation gained in "ecstasy" for re-interpretation by the singer-performers as "fixed improvisation[:] It is supposed to function like a 'transmigration of souls,' in which his idea spreads into performers and musicians in such a way that they inevitably carry it out as Wagner intended."19 For Wagner, "[t]he life-giving center of dramatic expression [...] is the performer's verse melody."20 Accordingly, he also composes from the word verse, "not from the read or written, but from the spoken word verse":21 "[T]he determining context of the melody lies [...] in the sensuous expression of the word phrase."22 And it was precisely for the exploration of this "sensuous expression[s]" that Wagner needed the repeated recitation of his texts. As a result, the score is strongly influenced by the speaking style of the reciting performer, according to Wagner's "own view [...] of the theatrical spoken performance of an epoch already past in 1872," the time of his theatrical influence in childhood and youth.23 The composition always follows the meaning, not the rhythm of the text, which corresponds to the declamation practice of the 19th century.24 Thus Wagner's reading performances pursue an important purpose: to secure the composition's connection back to the drama.

Figure 2. Amélie Haller: reading performance Rheingold, 15.09.2021
(c) Milena Galvan Odar

Figure 3. Amélie Haller: reading performance Rheingold, 15.09.2021
(c) Milena Galvan Odar

II. Methodology

Since in our project the Wagnerian development process is to be reconstructed in as much detail as possible in the work with the singers, the reenactment of a Wagner solo reading performance of Rheingold (a staged reading of the complete Rheingold libretto including the stage directions by a single person in front of an audience) was the logical first step. The term reenactment is explicitly not understood as an intended 1:1 reconstruction of a historical event – such a reconstruction would be impossible per se. This impossibility arises on one hand from the disparate source situation, on the other hand from the special quality of theater as a transitory medium, which is based on the constant exchange between actors and audience (feedback loop) in the sense of bodily co-presence.25 Even if a historical one hundred percent reconstruction of the reading performance should hypothetically succeed, the performative event would inevitably be different due to the differently socialized audience of the 21st century. Rather, the reenactment is understood as comparable to the original legal sense of re-enacting (re-en-act) a law.26 The focus is thus on the question of which artistic, aesthetic and performative strategies of the original (and in what way) can also have an effect in our present and be made artistically usable. The title of the DFG-knowledge-transfer-project also refers to this focus, which explicitly anchors the starting point of the view from the 21st century on historical performance practice.

For the reenactment, a collaboration was arranged with the performer and theater scholar Amélie Haller, who had already worked with fimt in the context of the Artistic Research and Music Theater Initiative on the project Storms of applause and thus had prior experience with historical pronunciation.27 The work on the reenactment of the Rheingold reading performance was carried out in four digital pre-rehearsals as well as three full-day live rehearsals in the Ahnensaal of Thurnau Castle. Dominik Frank and Milena Galvan Odar were involved in all rehearsals, while Kai Hinrich Müller, Volker Krafft and Ulrich Hoffmann were also involved in the video pre-rehearsals. On the evening of the last day, there was a public workshop presentation followed by an audience discussion. Rehearsal work and presentation were completely documented by video recording, the audience discussion as an audio recording. The video excerpts used below are from the recordings of the dress rehearsal and the presentation on Sept. 15, 2021.

Wagner's reading performance usually took place BEFORE the composition. Martin Knust has demonstrated that Wagner also used these performances to test the dramaturgical conception, the timing and the effects of certain emphases28 – thus, to explicitly prepare the composition. Therefore, it was important for us to explicitly choose a performer who did not know the music of Rheingold in order to avoid distortion effects: Any person who had studied the work extensively (like the scholars involved in the project) would automatically think and speak along with the composition during the reading. Thus, the performance would not correspond to the parameter of the development sequence that we set as primary, which starts from the purely spoken word and transforms it into song only in the last step. This problem could be avoided by casting Amélie Haller, who works mainly in spoken theater and performance art.

III. Results

1. Martin Knust's thesis that Wagner actually set to music the spoken theater declamation style of his time (specifically, of his theater experiences in his youth) can be confirmed. While a reading in the modern drama style lasts only 58 minutes and 15 seconds,29 the reading in the historical style, with a performance duration of about 01:45 hours, is much closer to the performance duration of the later concert performance with the historical tempi (about 02:15). The longer duration of the concerto results mainly from the purely instrumental passages, which last considerably longer than the spoken stage directions. Since it can be assumed that Wagner's reading of the Rheingold also had a similar performance duration as the reenactment due to his socialization in the historical declamation practice, we find an explanation for the quote: "If you weren't such boring guys, the Rheingold would be finished in two hours” („Wenn ihr nicht alle so langweilige Kerls wärt, wäre das Rheingold in zwei Stunden fertig“).30 If this quote was previously interpreted as a blatant exaggeration of Wagner, it suddenly makes sense as a realistic playing instruction in relation to the use of historical speaking tempi (and in the performance in the use of the historical tempi, which are significantly faster than those used in the performance practice of the 20th and 21st centuries).
2. Knust's thesis can also be confirmed that Wagner used his solo reading performances as a starting point for the later musical setting and thus in fact largely 'only' transformed the declaimed speech into declamatory singing. Evidence of this can be found in a number of places where Amélie Haller (who, as described above, did not know the music of Rheingold at the time of the performance) surprisingly clearly anticipates the composition.31 The following video illustrates this with a number of examples. First, an excerpt of the reenactment is shown, followed directly by the composed version with the score. Parallels continuously become clear here in the rhythm, the melody of the sentences, especially clearly set accents (for example "With diligence and sweat it is made", "So the drip wanted to deceive me cleverly"), the tempos (for example an extremely fast Nibelung dialogue versus an extremely slowly spoken Erda) as well as the interpretative attitude including the voice pitches (the giants and Erda speak relatively low, Mime and Freia very high) of the characters. For Amélie Haller, the reading interpretation resulted from the verse and typeface of the text, the stage directions, and the idea of depicting Wagner's historically documented rampant reading performance as extremely as possible, meaning to sharply delineate the characters from one another and also to work with the sharpest possible contrasts in the reading posture. If one compares the read version with the composed version, it is particularly striking that Wagner always conceives the singing from the sensuously spoken, declaimed word. The musical arrangement is used to give the declaimed word additional, special aspects. Thus, instrumental accompaniment is used to characterize the overall atmosphere of the situation: For example, the harps make the Rheingold glitter acoustically; during Freia's abduction, the orchestra intensifies the bustle created by Fricka's, Froh's and Donner's brief interjections. Special attention is paid to the long held notes, which are only possible in song, not in spoken theater declamation. Wagner uses this transition from speech to song to create emotional moments that cannot be adequately portrayed in a purely reading performance. A prominent example are the "Rheingold!" cries of the Rhinemaidens in the first picture as well as their lament at the end of the piece. Both achieve their full effect only in the composed version, not in the pure reading.32
   
   Video 1. Reading / Composition. Sound examples from: Wagner 1958.
3. In the performative reading, it is clearly noticeable that the stage directions are written in a literary style that is intended to enable the readers of the text or the listeners of the reading to imagine the scene in their own images. Thus, the stage directions are not aimed at stage-practical realizability but are as much literature as the character speech in the sense of an overall effect of the text. This result can possibly explain the performance-practical difficulties in the first performances of the Ring tetralogy and points to a difference in the layout of the "Gesamtkunstwerk" (total work of art): While Wagner writes out the vocal parts in the sense of a "fixed improvisation"33 and tries to define the mimic-gestural play of the performers with very many stage directions,34 questions of the equipment (stage design, costume, transformations, light) are only described in an ideal literary conception, but not prepared for the concrete stage realization.35 The stage directions in their poetic language, especially when read aloud, are more reminiscent of a fairy tale than of a play intended for performance. In fact, stage and costume aesthetics were also one of the major problems with the world premieres of the Ring dramas, both Rheingold and Walküre in Munich and the cyclical premiere in Bayreuth. One reason for this may be that Wagner simply had no precise idea of the realization of the scenery - in contrast to the psychological, mimic and gestural direction of the characters. This is also expressed in the fact that Wagner wanted "a real artist"36 for the realization of the scenery, meaning a congenial co-author who could realize the pictorial worlds Wagner had only dimly imagined in the stage directions. The fact that this wish failed in reality because of Wagner's desire to control everything, internal competition, and often simply because of the technically inadequate realization is documented in detail.37 The reading of the stage directions makes it clear how little they are oriented to historical stage practice and how strongly the poetic-fairy-tale gesture comes to bear in them.
   
   Video 2. Stage directions
4. Two problematic areas, which are not (or not strongly) apparent in the reception of the musical drama Rheingold, which has arrived in the opera repertoire, due to performance tradition and habituation, again become very clear in the reading performance. First, the drawing of the Nibelungen characters Mime and Alberich as different antisemitic caricatures of Jews: Mime represents the figure of the clichéd whiny, ridiculous, 'effeminate' Jew; research has named this type the "Ghetto Jew".38 Several aspects of these stereotypes become clear in the video montage: The basic gesture of whining, complaining, crying, and howling; the character's high, shrill voice; the increased sibilant sounds (exemplified in "With diligence and sweat it is made” ("mit Fleiss und Schweiss ist es gefügt")); sound blurring between "O" and "E" in "Ohe!, Ohe!," which brings up an association with the stereotype of the Yiddish "Oi" as well as the character aspects of unmanliness (Mime's enthusiasm for the "cute Niblungentand") and naivety (Mime tells the strangers Wotan and Loge his whole story, including his own despotic fantasies). All in all, the image of a ridiculous character emerges for the audience to laugh at along with the gods Wotan and Loge. A pointed example of this being laughed at is the passage where Mime, according to the text, "strokes his back." If one consults the historical rehearsal reports, it becomes clear that the back here is a stand-in for the non-notable word "ass" and that a flatulence unintentionally escapes Mime as he bends forward:39 reason enough for a sneering, hearty laugh from the gods and the audience. In contrast, Alberich represents the position of the likewise ridiculous, but nevertheless potentially dangerous Jew - sometimes referred to in research as the "stock market Jew"40 - who seeks to take over world domination. The ridiculousness manifests itself above all in the first image, in which Alberich stumbles and slips, allows himself to be duped by the Rhinemaidens, and stereotypically makes stupid calculations ("How good that you are not one: from many I probably please one, from one no one chose me!"). But Alberich's stupidity is also on display in the third picture, when he falls for the fairy tale trick known from Puss in Boots41 of transforming himself into a small living creature when asked to do so - which can then be caught without any problem. This is contrasted with Alberich's genuine dangerousness, which is expressed not only in his deep voice (which, on another level of analysis, also makes him an equal opponent of Wotan), but also in his lust for oppression, which knows no kinship or community boundaries: Alberich bullies his brother Mime as well as his own people, the Nibelungs. Further aspects to be interpreted antisemitically are Alberich's constant invisible presence ("[W]here you do not see him; [...] be aware of him [...]") as well as the narrative of the rape of the women, who are to be imagined as pure, by the dirty Nibelung Alberich ([Y]our pretty women [...] they force themselves to lust the dwarf" („[E]ure schmucken Frau‘n […] sie zwingt zur Lust sich der Zwerg“)). This difference between ridicule and danger is a stereotype of antisemitic representation, which can be found from the portrayal of the Jew Shylock in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice to the antisemitic caricatures in the Nazi hate sheet Der Stürmer (The Stormer).42
   If one takes the stage directions seriously and attempts to reenact Wagner's extremely committed performance style, as described by Martin Knust, the antisemitism inscribed in the work comes out more clearly than in most performances.
   
   Video 3. Antisemitism
   The second problem area is the image of women portrayed in the figure of Freia. This character, although central to the plot, has very little textual content throughout Rheingold, consisting essentially of various cries for help. In the performative reading, this problem becomes more apparent because, on the one hand, in staged performances the stage presence of the character disguises the small amount of speech, and, on the other hand, especially in modern performances, the performance is often staged against the weakness of the character, presenting her as a stronger figure than the text suggests. In a pure reading performance, however, the image of the woman comes to the fore unembellished. It remains unclear at this point whether the image of women is critically exhibited here by the author. For the time being, it remains to be stated that Freia's part in the plot is minimal. The following very short video gathers the complete texts of the character Freia.
   
   Video 4. Women´s image
   The clear visibility of the two topics of antisemitism and the image of women in the reenactment led to a special focus on these topics both in the practical work with the singers in the concert performance of Rheingold and in the scholarly discussion - in the form of two symposia in cooperation with the Landestheater Coburg, each consisting of an artistic research project and a day of lectures and discussions.

IV. Outlook

In the rehearsal work with the singers following the reenactment for the concert performance of Rheingold on November 18 and 20, 2021, the starting point consequently was also the spoken performance. The rehearsal methodology followed Wagner's approach of a three-step procedure: In the first step, the texts are declaimed and recited without musical accompaniment like play texts; in the second, they are spoken rhythmically to the piano accompaniment. Only in the last step are the texts sung in the modern sense (but always starting from the speech tone). On the eve of the Rheingold premiere, this process was presented in the context of a discussion concert. The video shows a small excerpt from the first picture of Rheingold with Ania Vegry (Woglinde), Ida Aldrian (Wellgunde), Eva Vogel (Floßhilde) and Volker Krafft (piano). In the first step, the singers speak the text freely in the historical declamation style, i.e. similar to Amélie Haller in the reenactment of the solo reading performance. In the second step, the music is added, but the singers continue to speak, but now already in a fixed rhythm. In the third step - starting from the declamation - the transition into song is then shaped, but at some points, in the sense of Wagner's contrast dramaturgy, they deliberately continue to speak – a stylistic device of Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient,43 whom Wagner described as ideal. For clarification, the singers in the video also perform the same passage once in 'normal' singing style. It becomes clear what dramatic effect these 'Schröder-Devrient moments' can have and how the listener's attitude of reception is directed by these 'disturbances' of the musical flow to the exact pursuit of the dramatic intention – completely in the sense of the music drama desired by Wagner.

V. Complete recording

For anyone interested and as material for further research, we provide here the complete recording of the Rheingold reading reenactment.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Keywords: Wagner, historisch informierte Aufführungspraxis, Rheingold, Reenactment

Dominik Frank