My name is Fred P. and I am a Ring-nut.
Do you know what I am referring to? You might wish to read a charming article about Ring-nuts by Henry Alford that appeared in The New York Times in 2009. Yours truly is one of the nuts he describes.
In 2004, Jad Abumrad and Aaron Cohen of New York Public Radio produced a program about Ring-nuts that I was proud to name and have a major role in: The Ring and I. Listen to it.
There is a segment of the opera audience that lives solely, it seems, to travel the world attending complete cycles of Richard Wagner’s glorious and monumental Der Ring des Nibelungen. If you know the clichés, then you think of this four-opera immersion in terms of fat sopranos wearing helmets and blonde braids and singing at high volume for many hours, and of helicopters whirring in the film Apocalypse Now.
But that is not what we Ring-nuts experience. For us, the cycle is the most extraordinary exploration of human nature and frailty. Depending how you look at the text and listen to the music, you can see a story of greed, selfishness, exploitation of women, the destruction of the environment (and, arguably, the whole planet) and so much more. We attend again and again not to experience what we already know, but to learn even more by thinking about the music and words in new ways with each interpretation we attend.
I have attended 47 complete Ring cycles in addition to dozens of performances of the individual operas — Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung. As a clever friend recently pointed out to me, that is 44 cycles more than Wagner himself had seen.
In June I went to San Francisco to attend my 48th cycle in the production by Francesca Zambello conducted by Donald Runnicles. I was also honored to be asked to lead the company’s Ring symposium, which included panels with musical, technical and production staff followed by an hour with three wonderful singers: Ronnita Miller (Erda), Brandon Jovanovich (Siegmund) and Greer Grimsley, whose Wotan is much loved by Ring-nuts.
At the start of the symposium I addressed audience members attending their first cycle by saying: “You are watching the story of a man who fancies himself as master of the universe whose duty is to enforce the laws inscribed in his spear. But he considers himself above the law and not subject to its constraints on his behavior. He fancies himself a real estate developer and has a gaudy castle built, complete with its own rainbow bridge. But he decides he does not want to pay his contractors and builders what they are owed. He pursues women everywhere and has numerous children outside of his marriage, including one daughter who is his favorite. The chief god’s wife is incensed at his infidelities and considers herself the guardian of family values. And yet her attitude to these other children is, in effect, ‘I really don’t care. Do you?’ All she wants is wealth and to be the only lady in her husband’s life. There are three dim-witted relatives, two young men and a young woman, who basically do what they are told so they can have a piece of the family business. The chief god has a ruthless, self-serving attorney who helps him steal vast amounts of wealth (gold) while finding ways of justifying the theft. And a wise woman, bearing the knowledge and experience of all women, rises from the ground to warn the chief god to be careful and says ‘Me Too’ as she tells him the errors of his ways.”
While the hardened Ring-nuts laughed knowingly, the new ones (Ringlets, let’s call them) sat stunned. One asked how Wagner, who died in 1883, could have written so specifically about a future he did not know. And that became the basis of the discussion. Wagner was a master storyteller, both in words and in music, and the brilliance of this cycle is that it is about human nature since the beginning of time. If we do not learn from the past, then we will do ourselves in because of our stubborn refusal to learn from our errors.
After San Francisco, my plan was to see my 49th cycle at the Met next spring when a superb cast will be conducted by Philippe Jordan and then see my 50th cycle in 2020 at the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth that Wagner built as a shrine to his own work and, he would tell you, his genius. Many people agree, even though he was a loathsome person in many ways.
Unfortunately, I did not get to see the entire San Francisco cycle, so my 50thRing won’t be in Bayreuth after all. A family medical emergency brought me home after Die Walküre, which meant that Wotan had just put Brünnhilde to sleep on a high rock and surrounded her with magic fire. As far as I am concerned, she still is there in deep slumber waiting for some hero to come along and sing rapturous music.
Thankfully, my relative came through the crisis and is on the mend. I did the right thing by coming home. But I confess that I wonder how things would end in San Francisco for Brünnhilde, Siegfried and the others. I have lived vicariously through the enthusiastic descriptions of the performances of Siegfried and Götterdämmerung, though I know the cycle does not end happily. Or does it?
Part of what I love about Ring-nuts is their positivity. They attend cycles to express roaring admiration for the singers and orchestral musicians who give their all to perform this extraordinary music. They gather to discuss Wagner’s ideas and intentions. And if they disagree with one another, they do it passionately yet respectfully.
Ring-nuts listen attentively to performances and hope that what is being told is not necessarily what is actually happening in the world. The Ring cycle seems to speak of existential threats to our species including uncontrolled climate change and weapons of mass destruction entrusted to despots. And yet it is love, as expressed by Sieglinde (the magnificent Karita Mattila in San Francisco), that prevails in the music, providing a glimmer of hope as things seem most dire.
And even if you ignore the story and completely bathe in the glory of the extraordinary music, you somehow feel better than you did before. Listen to my favorite passage from Götterdämmerung with eyes shut and see how you are transported.