The characters of " Twilight of the Gods. "

Gunther :

As his sister Gutrune, he has a bad reputation: coward, hypocrite, vain, interested, fearful etc. That is a lot for a man obsessed by his image. He is the typical politician preoccupied by his local reputation and the society man worried about his public image. As a consequence, his line of song is of the most melodious of the Ring, round, warm and noble as an electoral speech. The friendship declarations in the Ring sound nicely, but the theme, which accompanies them is taken from Mime's ceremonial reverences when he reveals his intention to murder Siegfried. Gunther is also a cyclothymic as many weak ones. He passes from bad humor to enthusiasm, and as long as his appearances are kept, he is capable of treason. Gunther is dominated by his half brother Hagen; he is in fact afraid of him so that he flatters him to disarm his jealousy.

One must not to caricature Gunther. His reputation on the Rhine is real. He receives Siegfried sitting on his throne, with his sister Gutrune by his side; and if Siegfried agrees so easily to be bound to Gunther, it is that on one hand he knows him by reputation, on the other hand he is sensitive to his status.

Gutrune :

It is Gunther's feminine copy but she has her own traits also. She is more than attractive, the music, which accompanies her appearance, follows her as a fragrant and nostalgic trail, fits her like a fine velvet glove. Sinuous, hesitating, allusive, she contrasts strongly with Brünnhilde's fairly maternal theme. There is an enormous contrast between these successive wives of the hero. This contrast explains the successful chemistry of the love potion. Brünnhilde is deep and "intellectual"; the daughter of Gibich is worldly and superficial.

Brünnhilde lives on a cliff, she lost everything and she is at the same time proud and humble with Siegfried. On one hand, proud, she reminds him that all the heroes bowed before the virgin, and that the passionate blood of Walkyries runs in her veins and could indeed annihilate him, on the other hand same Gutrune is petrified by the feeling of her insignificance with regard to the hero. She adopts a " low profile " and flatters his macho pride. (I am afraid of you, she says). Too humble, Brünnhilde lowers herself by repeating ceaselessly that she lost all her power. She is only human. Gutrune, in spite of her modesty on display possesses a real status.

She receives the young man, installed on a throne. Brünnhilde committed three errors: make the hero, drunk with new freedom, feel debt of gratitude, remind him that he is morally chained to the cliff, and above all, she is "overdoing it". She insists on passing to him a knowledge, which he does not understand. She is talking to him about things which do not interest him.

His attraction for her is purely sexual and sensual, anchored in the present time. He owes nothing to Gutrune, and she thinks only of enjoying herself and of "having fun"; Siegfried gladly agrees.

Brünnhilde is too confident: she sends Siegfried to learn things in the vast world. Gutrune is jealous and suspicious. She has a limited confidence in the faithfulness of her husband.

Hagen :

Hagen dominates the "Twilight of the Gods". He is certainly is a remarkable character. Endowed with an exceptional power of dissimulation and influence, he manipulates the Gibichungen at his will since a long time. In a sense he is an " alien " embarked on a spatial vessel, a "mole" in the service of his father. Always sad, he is somewhat afraid of, but laughed at. His mother brought him up with resentment, making him feel the inferiority of his rank. He is a half-hero, as Loge is a demi-god.The result is identical: resentment, repressed spirit, desire to burn down everything for one, cold hatred for another.

He does not want to get involved with the heroes, as Loge does not want to get involved with the Gods. One of the musical themes of Loge is a shrill parody of the theme of Walhalla.

Hagen's musical blazon, accentuates the threatening role of the son of the Nibelung, is a fanfare uniting the theme of the Rhinegold to that of Nibelungen and Walhalla. Loge is fast and he burns Siegfried's veins. Hagen is slow and floods Siegfried under malefic waves of disinformation. He will finish in his turn drowned by the Rhine maidens.

One of Hagen's themes is obsessing and almost parody. This theme describes well the technique of suggestion: the relentless repetition of the same affectionate and venomous intervals. It is of the same motiv family as that of the "little scheme" with Mime, and as the motive of Sieglinde when she tries to discover the identity of Siegmund. One of Hagen's traits is black humor, contrasting with the light irony of Loge. He expresses himself briefly but with the greatest efficiency. It is interesting to observe how he manipulates Gunther and how he steers Gutrune: by glances and gestures.As hypnotized, the Gibichungen obey him. It is interesting to note that Siegfried has the impression to have seen him somewhere.

He looks at him thoughtfully and with the certain distrust. Hagen is a legalist. He makes Siegfried swear on his Lance, like that of treaties, and takes good care of establishing his fault on public. When Siegfried's arm rises, when Brünnhilde appears, he does not dare to defy the opinion of the people and to seize the Ring when nothing would stop him. He prefers to wait for the further developments and a convenient occasion: when Brünnhilde will disappear.

Last remark. Hagen does not kill Gunther from behind like Fafner killed Fasolt. He fights with him and proves to be as the stronger one. This tells us a lot about the force and the courage of Gunther the Gibichung. Brünnhilde contemptuously indicates the degeneration of this race. After all, the "mentally defective" is not the one we think: it is not the illegitimate child Hagen, but Gunther - the legitimate one. Both Gibichungen are totally dominated by their half brother, as their respective motives testify. The famous descending quinte of Hagen is the antithesis of the merry ascending quinte of Siegfried's corn. It also sounds in the fanfares of the marriage.

The Vassals :

One is mostly incline to see in the choir of the vassals a concession to the traditional Opera. This point of view is biased. The commentators are influenced by the origin of the poem of the "Twilight of the Gods": "Siegfried's Tod", dating 1848 and supposed to mark down the great Opera. When Wagner put this poem in music, the first one by its conception, he spared himself an effort to put it in the diapason of the "Rhinegold" and the "Walkyrie".

So he, lazy Wagner, kept the original shape. On the other hand the music evolved, and if the poem was written in 1855, the music was finished in 1875 only. This interval of two decades should logically demonstrate itself by a loss of stylistic unity and almost all the commentators believed to have noticed, and, as Newman, have regretted it.

I can understand that they did not trust the composer: after all they are only critics. But they should have at least asked a question: if Wagner has sinned by carelessness or laziness and kept notably the choir of men (the only one of the Ring), what should he have done according to them to satisfy the orthodoxy of the Ring? Kill it?

Here the major misunderstanding of many a scholar is evident in all of its grandeur. They judge the Ring according to formal and theoretical criteria, those of Wagner the theorist of the 1850's. But Wagner the composer did not want to be imprisoned by a dogma. He used musical forms freely and without remorse, he expressed the dramatic intention in the most effective way. But this one, as I have already mentioned it higher, require the presence of choirs. By choirs, I do not mean the impressive dialogue among the people and Hagen. It is about a gigantic counterpoint similar to that of Walkyries, and in which each of the vassals keeps his originality. The real choir in the conventional sense of the term is very short, and welcomes Gunther and his wife in the yard of Gibichungen.

One often opposed the people of Hunding and the mute people of the Nibelungen, to those of Gunther who are a conventional choir, and one explains this opposition by famous hiatus of 20 years.

But one does not imagine that it is due not to the temporal distance which separates Wagner of 1848 - that of "old-fashioned" poem, from that of the 1853 - date of " more modern " drama of the "Rhinegold" and the "Walküre", but simply of the temporal distance which separates the action of "Walküre" from that of "Twilight"! The Nibelungs do not sing because they are terrorized and alienated. They are restricted to shouts of terror. The Neidlingen, people of Hunding do not even appear, they are only mentioned. The intrigue takes place from man to man between Hunding and Siegmund. On the other hand in the "Twilight", the people take a decisive role in the action. They are witnesses and guarantors of the legitimacy. They embody the agreement of Fricka and let us not forget that they sacrifice to Freia, Fricka and Donner.

The choir stays. Let us ask a simple question: to align himself with the dogma of 1850 and avoid the criticisms of the scholars, Wagner would have had to get rid of it. Let us try at the moment to show the scene. Gunther lands with Brünnhilde and has an official speech in front of his gathered court. He gets through the hedge of a solemn step, at the term of an essential journey for the dynasty. And the men who welcome him are dumb! Or they express their welcome by individualized and divergent expressions. One conceives the nonsense of this option. The choir of the people corresponds to the patriotic hymns, which weld a community. If there is an occasion where the vassals of Gunther should have intoned a hymn, it is indeed that one. The choir is naturally conventional because it expresses the agreement, which reigns in the yard of Gibichungen, not an obedience in the grand Opera.

It is necessary to make a remark of common sense once again. Wagner produced the Ring with the speed of one year and half per hour of composition. He did not stop questioning every word, every slightest note, and insisted on his concern of integration and his horror of "laisser faire".

The innumerable changes brought to the conclusion of the drama give evidence of this freedom and of his conscientiousness in composition. Besides, the poem of "Twilight", the one that conditioned the music twenty years later, is contemporary to the revolutionary theoretical ideas of Wagner. If he had wanted to change the structure of the "Twilight of the Gods", nothing would stop him from doing it. I read several condescending comments of renowned critics, giving lessons to Wagner and admitting that they saw the Ring only one or two times!

The analysis of the characters alone, even without calling upon historic and hermeneutic glosses, without formal considerations and resorting to the depths of psychology, are more than sufficient to justify irrevocably and completely the both the final lyrics of the "Ring" and its musical treatment.

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