| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: appetites are denied, starved, and insulted when they cannot
purchase their satisfaction with gold, are the energetic spirits
driven to build their lives upon riches. How inevitable that
course has become to us is plain enough to those who have the
power of understanding what they see as they look at the
plutocratic societies of our modern capitals.
First Scene
Here, then, is the subject of the first scene of The Rhine Gold.
As you sit waiting for the curtain to rise, you suddenly catch
the booming ground-tone of a mighty river. It becomes plainer,
clearer: you get nearer to the surface, and catch the green light
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: On The Gods is as good an answer as another. The very
senselessness of the scenes of the Norns and of Valtrauta in
relation to the three foregoing dramas, gives them a highly
effective air of mystery; and no one ventures to challenge their
consequentiality, because we are all more apt to pretend to
understand great works of art than to confess that the meaning
(if any) has escaped us. Valtrauta, however, betrays her
irrelevance by explaining that the gods can be saved by the
restoration of the ring to the Rhine maidens. This, considered as
part of the previous allegory, is nonsense; so that even this
scene, which has a more plausible air of organic connection with
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Odyssey by Homer: tell none neither man nor woman of all the folk, that thou
hast indeed returned from wandering, but in silence endure
much sorrow, submitting thee to the despite of men.'
And Odysseus of many counsels answered her saying: 'Hard is
it, goddess, for a mortal man that meets thee to discern
thee, howsoever wise he be; for thou takest upon thee every
shape. But this I know well, that of old thou wast kindly
to me, so long as we sons of the Achaeans made war in Troy.
But so soon as we had sacked the steep city of Priam and
had gone on board our ships, and the god had scattered the
Achaeans, thereafter I have never beheld thee, daughter of
The Odyssey |
