BBC: Pappano's Essential Ring Cycle

This statement unleashed a revolution

that changed opera and theatre for ever.

Its author, Richard Wagner.

He was talking about his Ring Cycle,

an epic composition that has become the ultimate challenge

for conductors, stage directors and singers,

all striving to understand and interpret it.

I've conducted the Ring Cycle twice now at the Royal Opera House

in London, and last year I brought together musicians

and experts to explore what's behind the Ring Cycle,

to look at it from the inside.

This is what we discovered.

The Ring Cycle consists of four operas over four days,

or as Wagner described it, a prologue and three festival days,

almost 16 hours of music.

Inspired by Greek drama, but by using Nordic myth as a vehicle,

it tells a story from the beginning of time,

and weaves its way through to the destruction of the old world order.

Its author was as ambitious as his creation.

Richard Wagner's life has aroused as much debate as his music.

Born in Leipzig in 1813, his life was full of turbulence,

dominated by extreme personal convictions,

fervent revolutionary zeal and torrid love affairs.

All this found musical form in his visionary operatic masterpiece,

The Ring Of The Nibelungen.

To unfurl this epic story, we'll visit the theatre Wagner built

especially for its performances at Bayreuth.

The glorious Bavarian landscapes which surround it, and the

personal shrine to Wagner, built by his wealthy patron, King Ludwig.

The task of bringing the entire Ring Cycle to life

is one of the most exciting experiences for any conductor,

and for the stage directors, designers and performers,

it's one of opera's ultimate creative challenges.

I'm working with director Keith Warner and the cast

and orchestra of the Royal Opera House.

The sheer beauty, vision, grandeur and drama of the music alone

would set this work of art in a league of its own.

But together with its text and theatrical content,

a fusion is created that pulls you into a uniquely intoxicating

and totally absorbing world that shakes you.

Ambitious? Yes.

We will encounter gods, giants, dwarves, water nymphs,

the Earth Mother, and yes, humans.

But this is not a fairytale.

It's tough messages about power, the yearning for it, the corruption

it engenders, but also the infinitely greater power of love.

The Ring Cycle opens with Das Rheingold,

the so-called prologue, but what is this Rheingold?

The Rheingold is a treasure that is hidden at the bottom

of the Rhine River and is guarded by the three Rhine maidens.

What you need to know is that whoever makes the Rheingold his own

can fashion a ring from it, and this ring will bring absolute power.

The person who has it can conquer the world, and can destroy it.

Good and evil. It is that powerful.

In Das Rheingold, this theme of power is unmissable, echoing

the contemporary power struggles Wagner himself was witnessing.

The first opera also sets the scene for the momentous events to follow,

and introduces the world of myth, which underpins the entire cycle.

There are 96 musicians with me here today,

to show you how some of Wagner's music is put together.

The orchestra includes six harps,

an incredible luxury for the time, and Wagner tubas,

instruments combining elements of the tuba and French horn,

created specifically for the Ring Cycle.

There's nothing quite like the beginning of Das Rheingold

in classical music.

Wagner conjures up out of just two notes,

an effect that is like no other.

Listen.

Way down low in the orchestra.

CELLOS PLAY

Joined by the bassoons.

BASSOONS PLAY

Depicting the beginning of things, the beginning of time,

the beginning of the universe.

It's the start of life.

Cells, musical cells in this case, nearly five minutes long.

Often performed in complete darkness.

Imagine the theatrical effect.

All of a sudden, you hear a horn call.

FRENCH HORN PLAYS

Minute by minute, the orchestra will build,

until a new element enters the music...

CELLOS PLAY

..with the entrance of the cellos and the bassoons.

It's as if we have musical veins,

as if there's blood coming into the picture...

..which is the point, because we want to create liquid.

Layer upon layer.

Listen to what happens now. We get more notes per bar.

All of a sudden, we have water.

An extraordinary effect, created just by movement,

but not by harmonic movement, by internal movement.

This is so modern.

In an act of theatrical daring, the opera starts underwater.

In the depths of the River Rhine,

three Rhine maidens are guarding the Rheingold.

Soon, they're joined by an evil dwarf, the Nibelung Alberich...

..who mysteriously makes advances to the Rhine maidens.

He learns that forging a ring from the gold yields infinite power.

But the ring can be forged only by someone who renounces love.

So Alberich makes his choice.

Alberich's plan is to rise to power with the ring to help him.

The resonances with Wagner's own world are clear.

He was writing in turbulent times,

surrounded by the political shifting of power.

In 1843, aged 29, and already an established composer, he'd taken up

a post as conductor at the Court Theatre in Dresden, which he soon

discovered was run, to his fury, in a highly undemocratic way.

He became convinced that his artistic ideals

could only be realised by social revolution,

both inside and outside the theatre.

At the same time, revolutionaries were calling

for new constitutional freedoms, and the unification of Germany.

When, in 1848 and 1849, when the revolution came to Dresden,

it was opportune to go on the barricades and start changing things.

Wagner did.

He was very active, ordered grenades, and this is the reason

that he had a price on his head after the revolution.

He was sought by the police, and his portrait was all over Germany

as not just a refugee, a fugitive from justice.

If he'd have gone back to Dresden,

just to show you how serious it was, he would have probably been executed.

Wagner had to flee Dresden for Switzerland,

and he remained in exile for 12 years.

Times were tough. Without regular income, he complained,

"I, too, am plagued by the need for gold!"

But his exile was also productive.

He composed the music for Das Rheingold,

and published his groundbreaking essay, Artwork Of The Future.

Here, Wagner described the theatrical revolution

he would bring to life in The Ring, where music, drama

and the visual arts would come together

in a single ambitious spectacle, set in his own mythological world.

In the universe Wagner creates, there are four strata of beings.

The gods at the top, the giants below them,

the Earth-dwellers, and the dwarves or Nibelungs,

who lived below ground.

Top of the tree is Wotan, chief of the gods.

Wotan is a god who is seemingly all-powerful, but he is flawed.

He carries with him a spear torn from the mythical world ash tree,

on which is written all the laws of civilisation.

With it, he rules the world, having sacrificed

an eye in return for wisdom.

After many trials, he gradually loses that will to control

the universe, and wants to free it back to mortal man.

This is the journey of The Ring.

Here at the Royal Opera House, director Keith Warner has been

working with Bryn Terfel to bring this character to life.

Wotan has to stand alongside King Lear,

let's say, as being one of the most complex characters

in all literature,

but more important than it being literary

is that it's very actively of use to us,

because I think we can see the predicament of leaders,

we can see the downfall and the rise of ideas,

and how ideas corrupt people, and how people corrupt ideas.

It's an incredible portrait of the world that is changing,

and that has to change...

..rendered inside one person.

During the second scene of Das Rheingold, we learn that Wotan

has built himself a suitably grand residence, his castle, Valhalla.

But the challenge is looming in the figure of Alberich,

the evil dwarf who has now used the stolen gold to forge the ring.

When you're listening to Wagner's music,

you'll be made aware that certain objects, certain characters,

places, thoughts, even, have a recurring musical theme

that specifically identifies them.

These themes are called leitmotifs.

Now, Wagner's genius lies in his ability to intertwine,

to manipulate these themes, creating a fluid

but richly psychological tapestry that pushes the story forward.

Listen to the actual Ring theme and listen how it turns upon itself.

HE SINGS RING THEME

So it descends, and then ascends, creating this circle. Listen.

ORCHESTRA PLAYS RING THEME

Now, this Ring theme that we've heard turning upon itself

now morphs in the second scene into something grander,

into a depiction of Valhalla, the hall that has been built,

the new building, this residence

that has been built for Wotan by the giants.

Using the same musical building blocks...

SINGS MOTIF

..it sounds like the Ring theme, and yet listen to how noble

and how beautifully written it is for the brass.

ORCHESTRA PLAYS MOTIF

Little fanfares.

Featuring the bass trumpet, also.

Now it opens up.

BRASS FANFARE CONTINUES

Wagner not only depicts objects and places with his leitmotifs,

it follows they also symbolise characters.

When Wotan has to pay the giants, Fasolt and Fafner,

who built for him Valhalla,

their arrival is announced by the sound of thundering footsteps,

an ingenious theatrical gesture, both menacing and humorous.

At this point in the story, Wotan's problems will not be fixed

by conventional wisdom.

Here, he needs his special confidant, his spin doctor,

and that character is called Loge. He's the god of fire.