Operacat, I wondered what you might be able to tell me about the cult of medievalism that existed in Germany during the Third Reich? It's something I'm extremely interested in, not least in terms of how it might have affected attitudes towards medieval music in post-war Germany (as the Nazi cult of nature proved for a while something of a block for contemporary German Green Politics, something about which I'm sure you also know far far more than me! ). If you have any information, or can recommend some sources, on this subject, I'd be fascinated. Do e-mail me privately if you have anything more extensive.

Given his portrayal of Fasolt and Fafner Wagner hardly seems to have been wholeheartedly on the side of the workers either...

I suppose they could be if you really wanted them to be and had a theory to prove...

Offbeat, I had another thought while watching Götterdämmerung yesterday evening (and into this morning) - I had tuned in by chance, not knowing it was on, and wasn't particularly in the mood for spending half the night watching Wagner, but I did anyway, and during the experience was struck by how seductive the music is, in the sense of keeping you listening and constantly drawing you along in its flow of sound over such extended durations. Without going into the technical details of how that's achieved, I think there's another important point here: Wagner's operas are not as centred on the voices as most are - what the voices sing could be seen more as a kind of "explicit" level floating on the top of many other more allusive levels in the orchestral "accompaniment". The libretto of the "Ring" is after all quite repetitious, and nowhere more so than in Siegfried's constant retellings of his dragon-slaying adventure; but while the libretto is "marking time" in this way, the music itself is still developing and exploring thematic interrelationships in a "symphonic" manner. So, in other words, get to know the main narrative strand through the libretto, but remember at the same time that the words are just the surface of something much more complex, and, to my mind, involving.

It's true that it strays much further than the other three away from Wagner's "music drama" concept (only fully realised in Rheingold) in the direction of operatic convention, but at the same time it expands the leitmotiv principle into a much more intricate and multilayered interweaving than previousy, so that, while the progression of vocal forms is simpler and more conventional, the orchestral texture is more (musically/psychologically) complex, which in a way it's bound to be since there are now so many motives in play, to which more are still being added.

Exactly the point I was about to make, Ollie. Gotterdammerung was originally conceived on its own, as a stand-alone opera. Realising that the story was not completely explained, Wagner then went on to write Young Siegfried: once that was complete, he realised that still more of the back-story needed recounting, and then finally added a Prologue. The music was then composed in the performance order, so the piece which has what is on the face of it the most conventional libretto nevertheless has by far the most complex psychological underpinning in the score, exactly as Richard has already pointed out. The analogy is more to melodrama or even filmic underscoring than conventional opera though, allowing the orchestra to comment on the action as an impassive narrator, revealing layers of psychological development that sung words alone could never hope to express.

The Nazi period isn't really my field...my partner is the historian, he teaches Modern History at Goldsmiths, although he really specialises in Italy rather than Germany, still, he may be able to point us in the direction of some sources.
A book entitled HOW GREEN WERE THE NAZIS has recently been published ...the Nazi cult of Blut und Boden has indeed cast a nasty (brown!) shadow over Green politics in Germany, but in fact it isn't/wasn't entirely absent from Green politics elsewhere in Europe....I think this is now veering somewhat off-topic, but this is why in England and Wales we have GREEN LEFT, and the Italian Green movement has something similar.