Schneider-Siemssen
on Götterdämmerung (Salzburg Easter Festival and
the Met, 1967-72)
Now
to the last "Ring" drama, Götterdämmerung.
It begins with a very difficult scene. The three Norns
are weaving the rope of fate. It is night. A symbolic "Ring" which looks sometimes
like a cloud is on the cyclorama. A portal scrim, a thin veil, hangs in front
of the stage, to give the picture an unreal character, from which only the rope
is carefully lit. This rope is always moving, like a net, which was of course
the intent: The intertwined connection of fate.
Many lighting effects were used for Brünnhilde's tragic encounter with Siegfried,
who commits unconsciously the most villainous deed of his life in the likeness
of Günther while wearing the Tarnhelm. Here flickering flames paint the dreadful
picture of the double meaning of the situation.
In the second act, I did something completely different: The Gibichung's
palace was designed as powerful stone architecture, something like the columns
of Stonehenge in England... everything large and imposing, even a bit crude...rough.
The men were a chorus of warriors, clad in armor. And the ellipse flowed into
the architecture.
This almost surrealistic scene is preceded by the mysterious duet between Alberich
and Hagen. Here it is the dead of night, only their heads are visible in the darkness.
Alberich's disappearance transforms slowly into the dawn and the large hall on
the banks of the Rhine becomes gradually visible, growing into a full sunrise
over the river. Siegfried's horn call awakens all.
In the scene where Hagen kills Siegfried, there are many musical questions
to be resolved in the scenery: the Rhine maidens, in a stream, swim to Siegfried,
so there had to be water nearby the bank. You should be convinced that a mighty
river is flowing in the background.
During the funeral procession, the rising moon is obliterated as if obscured by
a cloud, a black scrim is invisibly lowered. It worked very impressively with
the procession. Again there were projections... the path through the forest, a
tragic scene with the grand funeral march leading ultimately to the destruction
of the Gibichung hall, which was built to look like a gigantic rock quarry. It
was built out of foam rubber, and had breakaway cables that produced a great collapsing
effect that was followed by the flooding of the Rhine.
We had to perform some very precise tricks to produce the whole effect. At the
same time the orchestra plays the soft redemption motive. The stage is immersed
in blue light, which is no longer harsh. Do you think, that the "Ring", after
the destruction of Valhalla and the crumbling of the human world, doesn't end
without hope? From somewhere in eternity a soft light falls on this disaster and
shines consolingly on. ...One should not think in terms of small sections of time,
in years or in centuries, but of the eons of a cosmic space.
[From G. Schneider-Siemssen in conversation with
K. Pahlen: Die Bühne, mein Leben , Selke Verlag 1996;
(The Stage, My Life
- English translation by James Mulder, in press)]
