In the mirror of myth
David McVicar reflects on the meaning of myth in The Ring, its dramatic and political relevance today, and the challenges of staging a production that appeals to the audience's imagination
RM What role does myth play in your project?
DM When I started thinking about The Ring over 20 years ago, as well as when I returned to it for the Milan project, I asked myself why Wagner chose a mythological world. Wagner intuitively understood, as an artist, the importance of myth in our lives. It is something that today's society has lost. To say that something is a myth is to say that it is as false as the lies of politicians. Our ancient relationship with myth, on the other hand, alluded to something that was not literally true, but rather true in a deeper sense, connected to our profound spiritual journey. One of the weaknesses of the modern age is precisely that we have lost the sacred link between man and the rest of creation around us, a relationship that in ancient civilisations was explained by myth.
RM What role does myth play in Wagner's project?
DM Wagner applies a mythological framework to the story he wants to tell. And yet the story he tells belongs to his time and is still relevant today. He wants to remind us that transgressions against ourselves and the environment are indelible. Myth explains how we got to this point and asks the question: where will we go from here? In Rheingold, Wagner invents a creation myth based on the fundamental discovery of money, capital, and financial growth. Money controls all our lives from cradle to grave, yet it only has the value we ourselves attribute to it.
One of the most fascinating aspects of TheRing story is that no one ever actually uses the power of the ring. Its only power is that all the characters on stage believe it to be powerful. It is the greatest myth of all, so much so that the 16 hours of The Ring boil down to this one meaningless circumstance: the power of the ring lies in the value that everyone attributes to it. Wagner tells us of a journey through life that, because of this illusion, takes on a futile, meaningless character, but which at the same time has its own beauty, simply because life has been lived.
RM The Ring ultimately speaks of human beings and their passions...
DM Alberich's renunciation of love in order to possess the ring in Rheingold, which is then imitated by other characters, is fascinating. We need to consider what the opposite of love is: hatred, anger, a combination of both, or the range of negative impulses that dominate man. The overarching theme that runs through TheRing is the awareness of what love is in the broadest sense, not merely in the erotic sense. We must always bear in mind the era in which Wagner lived, when he was confronted with the effects of the industrial revolution on human beings, with the discovery of the achievements of industry and the subsequent radical transformations in the balance of power between nations. In The Ring, Wagner offers one of the most penetrating analyses of human nature and the social structures that man has created. He does so with intelligence, compassion, and artistic understanding. This is why he chooses to adopt myth. As with Greek myths, myth is a mirror. The entire Ring is a mirror that Wagner holds up to us.
RM How do you stage this "mirror" Ring?
DM It is not easy to tell this story on stage. There is great heterogeneity between the four parts of TheRing—the music is different; the narrative is different. Since Wagner took so long to complete it, the very perception of the story has gradually changed. It is difficult to create a coherent, unified dramaturgical structure that makes the audience understand, over the course of 16 hours of opera, that the point of arrival depends on the point of departure, that there is a trajectory, a defined dramaturgical evolution. It is a piece that, on the one hand, requires political awareness and humanistic sensitivity, and on the other, requires you to stage dragons, rainbows, giants, talking birds, a magical fire, and a river that floods the entire stage...
RM What approach did you choose to stage this multifaceted subject matter?
DM A literal approach is certainly not the best choice for resolving the problems posed by Wagner. If you stick to the stage directions as they are written, you lose the symbolic heart of everything that happens. In his very long and detailed stage directions, Wagner already imagines cinema, a technology a century ahead of his time, which is extraordinary. Fortunately, however, theatre did not follow suit. Nor should it. Theatre works in different terms. In theatre, the audience is asked to actively engage their imagination in the story being told. So how do you create a giant in theatre? There are, of course, many ways: you can ignore Wagner's instructions, use projections, elaborate costumes... How can you attribute symbolic resonance to a dragon, avoiding the literal approach that would inevitably end up turning the story into a pantomime? The solution you choose depends on how much imagination you want to ask the audience to use.
RM These seem like difficult problems to solve...
DM Indeed. Keep in mind that we are dealing with music, some of the greatest music ever written for the theatre. We are dealing with singers who must perform difficult parts for a very long time, competing with a very loud orchestra. How can we position them so that they can be heard at their best? How can we best honour the wonderful beauty of the score? How can we visually complement the music? How can we offer a visual correspondence with what the audience is listening to? These are challenging and fascinating questions.
RM Which characters interest you most in TheRing?
DM All Wagnerian characters are of the utmost importance: there are no trivial ones. Every character is extremely important, regardless of how much they sing or how much stage time they have. Even Froh, whom we will not see again, has his place and significance in the dramaturgy of TheRing. Obviously, Wotan is the most fascinating character, but ultimately, The Ring belongs to Brünnhilde. Siegfried, on the other hand, is the most difficult character to portray because it is difficult to love him, difficult to make the audience care about him. My favourite character is Mime, a character I love. He is extremely interesting. He is the most disturbed, sick, strange, abused, dangerous, criminal, extremely negative character, but not through his own fault. Alberich is also totally fascinating. I associate him with Satan in Milton's Paradise Lost. Both characters have their reasons for fighting against divine will. Even Hagen has his reasons. Wagner's genius—as is also the case with Mozart and Shakespeare—is his ability to create multidimensional, fully developed characters.
RM If you could choose only one scene from the entire Ring, which one fascinates you the most?
DM The scene I find unbearably moving is Wotan's farewell, before he kisses Brünnhilde's eyes and puts her to sleep, perhaps forever. I find the whole scene leading up to that point fascinating, the complexity with which the father-daughter relationship is handled, the realisation of a situation from which there is no escape, but which at least can be faced with love.
RM What can we say about the unity of TheRing?
DM I think it is a mistake to impose unity on TheRing, to ignore the evolution in the project. Wagner changed his mind about its meaning as he worked on it. When we reach Götterdämmerung, we must consider the ambiguity that has arisen. Through his reading of Schopenhauer, Wagner arrived at an extraordinarily sombre conclusion, which speaks of the end of the world, closer to us today than we can imagine. Even Brünnhilde's final monologue contains supreme ambiguity. The character has passed from divine to mortal status, but despite the unfortunate outcome of the story, her love has given value to the tragedy that has unfolded.
RM Let's close the circle—or shall we say ring?
DM Yes, let's go back to the beginning. The myth originated at a time when Neolithic man developed his own funeral practices, placing bodies in the foetal position and thus interpreting death as something other than an end, but rather as a new beginning. The myth exists because we feel the need to understand ourselves in the face of the inevitability of our death. Wagner's TheRing corresponds to the works of the ancient Greek tragedians in their attempt to address and find an answer to such a question.
Raffaele Mellace