The Rhinegold is normally performed without an intermission, but the director stopped the rehearsal to be able to give our society a special reception the purpose of which was to illustrate his direction in light of the other interpretations of the work.
The essentials of Friedrich's speech were the following:
One is often tempted to pose the question, where and when the events in The Rhinegold really take place. The answers given by the analyses of the mythology or by different stage productions lead to divergent places and periods; in Norway, somewhere on the mountains; in an undefineable distant time or in an uncertain future (=according to the Sci-Fi interpretation), on the banks of the Rhine in the 19th century or in Hitler’s State Chancellery the fascination of the "modern" myth lies in the fact that it can be revived at regular intervals according to the current interests of each decade.
The Nibelungen Tetralogy is a reversed Greek tragedy which consisted of three tragic plays and a jocular sequel. This satirical afterpiece contained grotesque myth-orientated features. The ring starts with a prologue (Vorabend) which is not lacking in playful elements, is followed by three tragedies The Valyrie, Siegfried and the twilight of the Gods. The whole tetralogy is based on a German mythical story of The Nibelungen as it is told in Das Nibelungenlied and in the Edda Sagas. In all this epics as in Kalevala the myths are playing a prominent part and all the epics mentioned also include similar incidents. The Nibelungen Tetralogy shares the same features with German and other European myths. The text and the rhythm of music in Wagner’s work contain references to the epics of other nations and different ethnic cultures.
Wagner has given the world described in the tetralogy a vertical, hierarchical structure that goes back to the Middle Ages and is recognisable already in The Rhinegold; in the upper spheres live the gods such as Wotan, Loge and Freia; on the middleground is The Rhine with the Rhinemaidens, here also dwell the ordinary mortals and the giants; at the bottom are living the crippled dwarfs (of the dreams) like Alberich.
When the Helsinki Ring is finished in the year 1999 with The Twilight of the Gods , one will apparently ask what kind of catastrophe is really happening in the final scene of Godsgloaming. There will be many answers: it signifies an end of a certain epoch, but there is also a hope that the end of this epoch means a beginning of a new area, a rebirth of a new world. The musical and contextual elements of the work reveal that the question is by no means of an abstract beginning of a new epoch but something that has existed, has irrevocably come to an end as happened in the disappearance of Atlantis, and this is the beginning of a new story. The new world is represented in The Twilight of the Gods by Wotan, the supreme god who offers a possibility to a continuation of life. On the other hand, the appearance of Alberich as a ghost in the last part of the tetralogy, is a threat to the birth of a new better world.
Now as the 20th century closes we are talking about the death of all ideologies. The question raised by Wagner in the tetralogy is: "Will love and freedom be able to defeat the present-time conspiracy of money and power?".
I wish The Ring will arouse a widely-spread discussion on this in Finland.
The writer is working as a professor of German language and culture at the university of Turku and as an assistant professor of German in the Helsinki School of Economics. The text above is based on the writer's note made as an interpreter of Götz Friedrich's speech at the reception arranged for the Finnish Wagner Society 3rd June 1996.