WAGNER & HEAVY METAL
  • Home
    • Donner und Wetter!
    • From Metal to Wagner
    • From Rush to Lohengrin
    • Franz Liszt - The First Rock Star
    • The Wagner - Strauss connection
    • The day of Wagner & Heavy Metal
    • Classical picks
  • Latest
    • Ein Holländer in Bayreuth 2014
    • Ein Holländer in Bayreuth 2017 - Meistersinger
    • Ein Holländer in Bayreuth 2017 - Der Ring
    • Ein Holländer in Bayreuth - Parsifal 2018
    • Ein Holländer in Bayreuth - Parsifal 2023
    • Ein Holländer in Bayreuth - Tannhäuser 2023
  • One Ring to rule them all
    • Wagner & Tolkien: Ring to Ring
    • Die Nibelungen (Fritz Lang 1924)
  • Metal Section
  • Nederlands
    • De kluis (recensies)
    • Trip naar Bayreuth (2014)
    • De tovenaar van Bayreuth (2014)
    • Bayreuther Meistersinger (2017)
    • Bayreuther Ring (2017)
    • Parsifal in Bayreuth (2018)
  • Contact

The Steampunk Ring

7/27/2023

0 Comments

 
A tale in images of Der Ring des Nibelungen for which inspiration was sought in Steampunk - that combination of nature and digitless science in a world that can be simultaneously antique and futuristic. The images were generated with AI software.
Picture
What images to add to Wagner's opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen? What images to add to music that is already so illustrative of itself, music that already contains everything? Listening to Wagner is like looking with your ears. Not infrequently, as a listener, you discover that the ideal staging of his operas takes place in the theatre of one's own mind. An amorphous collection of images that, in all their diversity, merge into a more or less coherent whole according to the logic of a dream. For the following graphic portrayal of Der Ring des Nibelungen, I dreamed with my eyes open and sought inspiration in the world of Steampunk - that combination of nature and digitless science in a world that can be simultaneously antique and futuristic. For this, ironically, digital techniques were used. The images were generated with AI software.

The world of the story of Der Ring is a world in which humans, the moment the waters of the Rhine begin to flow (to the tones of a swelling Es chord), have already left their mark. A world in which industrialisation and moral ambiguity go hand in hand (a bit like in the Bayreuther Chéreau Ring). A world in which a desolate landscape is host to gods, giants, dwarves and humans who all seem, in one way or another, to be lost in it. A landscape in which creatures are strangers to the world they inhabit, strangers to each other, and above all, strangers to themselves. 
DAS RHEINGOLD (the preliminary evening of the Steampunk Ring)
First scene
Child of a loveless mother and ugly as hell. Yet, Alberich the Nibelung hopes for romance when, walking along the banks of the Rhine, he hears the singing of three Rhinemaidens.   
Picture
Woglinde and Alberich. In a seemingly happy moment, when Alberich does not yet see his illusions of love shattered.
The teasing lasted a bit long. It became clear to the Nibelung that the three water nymphs made fun of him and never considered him a serious partner for their love. Fortunately, they were kind enough to point out to Alberich the Rhinegold and the secret it held: the gold can be made into a magic ring which gives power to rule the world, if its bearer first renounces love. 
​The dwarf does not think twice. He, who has never known love, now knows that he will never need love. Alberich steals the gold, and flees.
Picture
Wotan
Second scene
We leave the lowlands and find ourselves in a mountainous landscape where chief god Wotan casts a satisfied glance at the Valhalla that Fasolt and Fafner have built for him. It appeases, for now, Wotan's appetite for megalomania.
Picture
Freia and Fasolt
As payment for their services, the giants have already taken Freia. For Fasolt, a giant with a sensitive heart, Freia is more than a deposit. For him, she is the promise of something beautiful in his life.
​​
But no Freia, no apples, no eternal youth for the gods. Wotan dismisses any concerns his fellow gods may have about this. Loge surely will come up with a solution for this.   
Picture
Loge
​Chain-smoking cunning Loge is certainly not without humour. You are never sure what to make of him but if you are susceptible to it you will certainly laugh at his dry remarks. He talks about Alberich, his golden ring and how the dwarf subjugated his fellow Nibelungen to mine treasures for him. Loge suggests the giants to pay them with the Nibelungen hoard. The giants agree, for now. 
Picture
To the sound of a droning, dark orchestral interlude, two ominous-looking fellows descend into Nibelheim. One of them, Wotan, can think of only one thing, the ring and the power it holds. Loge and he are not here for business as usual. Their business is theft. 
Picture
Third scene
In Nibelheim the Nibelungen are enslaved by Alberich with the power of the ring. Alberich's brother, Mime forged a magic helmet, the Tarnhelm. With this device one can become invisible and take any shape one want.
Picture
Alberich as toad.
Fourth scene
Alberich should have known better when Loge dared him to use the Tarnhelm to take the form of a toad. But the dwarf refused to turn down the challenge and now faces the consequences. Loge and Wotan capture the toad and rob him of the ring, the hoard and even the Tarnhelm. Alberich, who once cursed love, now curses the ring - thus condemning all its possessors.
Picture
Donner
Once back in the godlike realm, Wotan cannot enjoy the ring for long. The giants won't settle for just the Nibelungen hoard. They want that ring too. Once in possession of it, Fafner, in lust for the ring, beats his brother Fasolt to death. Cain and Abel in the world of the gods. Wotan sees it happen with a certain sense of discomfort. On his way to Valhalla, across a rainbow bridge Donner smashed out of the rocks, the nuisance in him grows. He has been given a preview of the curse the ring carries.
Picture
Erda
Not that Wotan was not warned about all this. Erda, the Goddess of the Earth, had addressed the chief god in lyrical yet insistent terms, warning him of the misfortune the ring would bring him. So Wotan gave the ring to the giants, but even more than by her words of warning, he was impressed by Erda's seductive innocent appearance. And as soon as this opera, Das Rheingold, is finished he will impregnate her with eight children: the Valkyries. Those children, Brünnhilde in particular, we will encounter in the following opera.
Picture
They had one job. And they miserably failed at it. Now, at the end of Das Rheingold, the daughters ​of the Rhine lament in horror over the loss of the gold they were supposed to be guarding. We leave them alone for now but they will return in the last opera of this tetralogy: Götterdämmerung. But more on that later. Next: Die Walküre.
DIE WALKÜRE >

Software: StableDiffusion XL, Photoshop

- Wouter de Moor
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    RSS Feed

    The merciless Tito of Milo Rau
     Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny
    Bayreuth 2023
    THE STEAMPUNK RING
    The Day of the Dead
    Mahler and the Resurrection
    TIME
    KÖNIGSKINDER: A TRIUMPH IN TRISTESSE
    An EVENING WITH DER FREISCHUTZ
    DAS RHEINGOLD ON PERIOD INSTRUMENTS
    UPLOAD (LIVING IN A DATA STREAM)
    DER SILBERSEE
    A (POST) COVID PARSIFAL
    THE WRITE OF SPRING
    A DescenT Into The Nibelheim Of The Mind
    Eddie van Halen
    Wagner at the movies
    With Mahler and Stravinsky into the new year
    The return of Die Walküre
    Pagliacci / Cavalleria Rusticana
    (No) Bayreuth (Summer blog)
    Tannhäuser: what's on a man's mind
    About extreme music
    Die Tote Stadt
    Helmut Lachenmann in the Mozart sandwich
    Oedipe: is man stronger than fate?
    One More ... (Ring cycle)
    Marnie: opera & pictures
    The Halloween Top 10
    Jenufa: ice-cold reality & warm-blooded music
    ​My Parsifal Conductor: a Wagnerian Comedy
    Lohengrin: in the Empire of the Swan
    Die Zauberflöte in a roller coaster
    Ein Holländer in Bayreuth: Parsifal
    Heavy Summer (the road to Parsifal)
    Lohengrin in screenshots
    Lessons in Love and Violence
    Berlin/Blog: Faust & the claws of time
    The Gambler: Russian roulette with Prokofiev
    BACH/BLOG: BachFest Leipzig
    Der Fliegende Holländer, Wagner & Dracula
    The Christina cycle of Klas Torstensson
    La Clemenza di Tito: Mozart über alles
    Bruckner and the organ
    Gurre-Lieder: the second coming
    Parsifal in Flanders: Reign in Blood
    Tristan & Isolde and the impossible embrace
    Danielle Gatti & Bruckner's 9th
    On the birthday of Ludwig (Beethoven's  mighty 9)
    The dinner party from hell
    Zemlinsky & Puccini: A Florentine diptych
    La clemenza di Tito (Veni, Vidi, vici)
    Eliogabalo (here comes the Sun King)
    La Forza del Destino
    Das Wunder Der Heliane
    'Ein Wunder' to look forward to
    Ein Holländer in Bayreuth
    Franz Liszt in Bayreuth
    Salome & The Walking Dead
    Lohengrin in Holland
    Wagner Weekend
    The Summer Of 2016
    Parsifal in Screenshots (Bayreuth 2016)
    Being Tchaikovsky
    Gustavo & Gustav: Dudamel & Mahler
    Haitink & Bruckner: a never-ending story
    Henry Rollins (spoken word)
    David Bowie
    For Lemmy and Boulez
    Boulez ist ToT
    Lemmy -  Rock In Peace
    The Battle: who's the better Lohengrin?
    Stockhausen and Heavy Metal
    Franz Liszt in the funny papers
    Tristan und Isolde
    Der Rosenkavalier
    Solti's Ring and Bayreuth in 1976
    Easter Chant (Via Crucis)
    Boulez turns 90
    Holy Tinnitus
    Franz Liszt in the Phot-O-Matic
    The Holy Grail
    Franz Liszt - Rock Star avant la lettre
    The best theater experience in my life
    Boulez in Holland

    TIMELINE

    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    May 2023
    January 2023
    October 2022
    June 2022
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    March 2021
    October 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    November 2019
    September 2019
    July 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    March 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    June 2017
    April 2017
    December 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    November 2014
    January 2011

Wagner-HeavyMetal.com
  • Home
    • Donner und Wetter!
    • From Metal to Wagner
    • From Rush to Lohengrin
    • Franz Liszt - The First Rock Star
    • The Wagner - Strauss connection
    • The day of Wagner & Heavy Metal
    • Classical picks
  • Latest
    • Ein Holländer in Bayreuth 2014
    • Ein Holländer in Bayreuth 2017 - Meistersinger
    • Ein Holländer in Bayreuth 2017 - Der Ring
    • Ein Holländer in Bayreuth - Parsifal 2018
    • Ein Holländer in Bayreuth - Parsifal 2023
    • Ein Holländer in Bayreuth - Tannhäuser 2023
  • One Ring to rule them all
    • Wagner & Tolkien: Ring to Ring
    • Die Nibelungen (Fritz Lang 1924)
  • Metal Section
  • Nederlands
    • De kluis (recensies)
    • Trip naar Bayreuth (2014)
    • De tovenaar van Bayreuth (2014)
    • Bayreuther Meistersinger (2017)
    • Bayreuther Ring (2017)
    • Parsifal in Bayreuth (2018)
  • Contact