Richard Wagner saw his cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen as a single whole. When its first part, Das Rheingold, was ready, the cycle was not. Wagner wanted to wait until it was complete and stage it himself. King Ludwig II of Bavaria did not want to wait. He scheduled the performance at the Royal Court and National Theater in Munich, and Das Rheingold was first performed on September 22, 1869. Wagner stayed away from the premiere.
opera
One Formula for Seven Operas
Between 1977 and 2003, Karlheinz Stockhausen composed LICHT, light, a cycle of seven operas named after the days of the week. Together they last about 29 hours. The whole cycle is built on a single superformula of three melodies, one for each of the central characters, Michael, Eva and Luzifer. The formula defines the tonal centers and the durations of whole scenes. Each opera is composed from an elaborated form of its own day’s part of the formula.
Twenty-Six Years for the Ring
Richard Wagner began work on what became Der Ring des Nibelungen in 1848. He completed it in November 1874, twenty-six years later. The cycle had its premiere in 1876 in Bayreuth.
No Seat After the Curtain Rises
The terms of use of the Bavarian State Theaters are published as an official regulation. One sentence deals with latecomers. Mit Beginn der Veranstaltung erlischt aus Sicherheitsgründen und mit Rücksicht auf die mitwirkenden Künstlerinnen und Künstler sowie die anderen Besucherinnen und Besucher der Anspruch auf den gebuchten Platz. When the performance begins, the claim to the booked seat expires, for safety reasons and out of consideration for the performers and the other members of the audience. A latecomer is let into the hall only if there is a suitable break.
Three Versions of Fidelio
Beethoven wrote one opera, and he wrote it three times. The first version had its premiere on 20 November 1805, after more than two years of work. A revised version followed on 29 March 1806, and Beethoven withdrew it after the second performance. The third version, now called Fidelio, was first performed on 23 May 1814. The revision took him almost half a year. Along the way he wrote four overtures for the work: Leonore I, II and III, and the Fidelio overture. He wrote to his librettist Treitschke: die oper erwirbt mir die Martirerkrone. The opera is earning me the martyr’s crown.
You Set the Rule Yourself
In the third act of Richard Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, the young knight Walther has already failed the masters’ singing test. He wants to write a new song, and he asks the shoemaker and master singer Hans Sachs: Wie fang’ ich nach der Regel an? (How do I begin according to the rule?) Sachs answers: Ihr stellt sie selbst und folgt ihr dann. (You set it yourself, and then you follow it.)
The Marker in the Master-Singers
Richard Wagner’s opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg premiered in Munich on June 21, 1868. The town clerk Beckmesser holds the guild office of Merker, the marker. In the first act, the young knight Walther sings for admission to the guild. Beckmesser writes each of his faults on a slate with chalk, loudly. Because of the many faults, the masters decide that Walther has versungen, sung himself out. The real Hans Sachs, who lived from 1494 to 1576 and belonged to the Nuremberg guild, once proposed that the judgment of master-songs should not be left to the four markers alone. Several times a year, the audience should judge.
Contracts in Das Rheingold
Wagner’s Das Rheingold was first performed on 22 September 1869 at the court theater in Munich. In the second scene, Wotan wants to get out of paying the giants for Valhalla. The giant Fasolt warns him to keep faith with contracts. Then he tells him why: Was du bist, bist du nur durch Verträge (What you are, you are only through contracts). Wotan cannot break the agreement without damaging the basis of his own power.
Nibelung Loyalty
Nibelungentreue is a German compound noun, literally Nibelung loyalty, expressing the concept of absolute, unquestioning, excessive and potentially disastrous loyalty to a cause or person.
It is derived from the Medieval chivalric ideal of loyalty, Middle High German triuwe, as exemplified in the second part of the Nibelungenlied, where the Burgundian kings Gunther, Gernot and Giselher refuse to hand over to Kriemhild their loyal vassal Hagen of Tronje, who is guilty of murdering Kriemhild’s husband, Siegfried. The brothers place the loyalty to their friend above their obligations to their sister or to justice, leading to disaster and the complete destruction of the Nibelungs.
The modern term Nibelungentreue was coined by chancellor Bernhard von Bülow in his speech before the Reichstag on 29 March 1909. Addressing the Bosnian Crisis, von Bülow invoked the absolute loyalty between the German Empire and Austira-Hungary to their Alliance of 1879against the threat by the Entente Cordiale:
Meine Herren, ich habe irgendwo ein höhnisches Wort gelesen über eine Vasallenschaft gegenüber Österreich-Ungarn. Das Wort ist einfältig. […] aber die Nibelungentreue wollen wir aus unserem Verhältnis zu Österreich‐Ungarn nicht ausschalten. Die wollen wir vor aller Öffentlichkeit Österreich‐Ungarn gegenüber wahren.
“Gentlemen — I have somewhere read a scornful word regarding a [German] vassalage to Austria-Hungary. This is fatuous. […] but we will not eliminate the Nibelung loyalty from our relation to Austria-Hungary. This we want to preserve towards Austria-Hungary in full public view.”
The term is adopted by emperor Wilhelm II of Germany as the German Empire declared war alongside Austria-Hungary on 1 August 1914. After the defeat of the Central Powers in 1918, the notion of th Dolchstoß (“Stab in the back”) also invoked the Nibelungen legend, invoking the cowardly murder of Siegfried.
Nibelungentreue was later, in East Germany during denazification and by the 1980s also in West Germany, applied (derogatively) to Nazi ideology, especially in connection with the Schutzstaffel motto, Meine Ehre heißt Treue. Used in this sense by Marxist commentators, the term describes a fanatical Germanic military loyalty associated with fascism and militarism.
Franz Führmann in 1955 wrote a poem called Der Nibelunge Not (“the plight/distress of the Nibelungs”, the Middle High German title of the Nibelungenlied) in which he portrays the Nibelungs as a Germanic Töterdynastie (“dynasty of killers”) who brought a curse on their descendants. The term is also occasionally found in English-language literature about Nazi Germany; thus, Steinberg (1990) describes Goebbels’ suicide as “a paroxysm of Nibelungentreue“.
Source: Wikipedia
Nibelungentreue
A German with extensive experience living and working in the U.S. made this comment about entering into and maintaining agreements:
“I more observed that you make easier commitments in some cultures, and somewhere it takes more time. Then, in some cultures you can adjust when the boundary conditions dramatically change. And in others you stick to your word whatever happens. I guess that probably is the concept of Nibelungentreue, which has both positive and negative implications.”