YMMV / The Ring of the Nibelung

aka: Der Ring Des Nibelungen

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Whether or not Alberich was looking for love or just looking for sex is left up in the air.
  • Fafner can be portrayed differently in the scenes before the fight over the ring. Sometimes, he is shown to be gruff, violent and Obviously Evil from the beginning, sometimes, on the contrary, he is a calm and collected Deadpan Snarker and the Blue Oni to his passionate brother.
  • It's also arguable whether Gutrune loved Siegfried and just wanted to secure his love or she trapped him merely because he was the coolest hero ever.
• Awesome Music: There's a reason that cycle became one of the most famous bunch of operas in existence.
• Best Known for the Fanservice: Following the Venusberg scene in Tannhäuser, Richard Wagner was no stranger to this:
  • Das Rheingold opens with the Rhine Maidens frolicking underwater in a scene that scandalized many in the 1870s. One critic referred to it as das Hurenaquarium ("the whores' aquarium"), which angered the husband of one of the singers who had been in that scene so much that he took the critic to court. In one more recent Bayreuth production the singers were required to perform in the nude and sing while swimming in real water.
  • Act 1 of Die Walküre closes with long-separated twins Siegmund and Sieglinde about to have sex, just when (in the words of Wagner's stage instructions) "the curtain falls quickly". Compared to that, even the much-loved "Wotan's farewell and fire magic" at the end of act three faces tough competition.
• Designated Hero: Wagner had a classical sense of The Hero, i.e., someone who is the protagonist of his story and whose actions have consequence, and not necessarily someone that the audience is supposed to identify with on a moral level (which is the more contemporary notion of a hero):
  • There are some people out there who cannot stand Siegfried, whom they view as a bully and a boor. The anti-Semitic connotations with his treatment of Mime don't help. And he kidnaps Brünnhilde under the disguise of Gunther, then gives her to the real Gunther in a forced marriage (i.e. rape), which is pretty despicable; even if he was under the effects of Love Potion, he still saw it as no big deal to kidnap a woman on behalf of someone else.
  • Wotan's pretty openly a Manipulative Bastard, the Rhinemaidens taunt Alberich cruelly for their own amusement, Alberich is as miserable as he is power-hungry, and Siegmund and Sieglinde are incestuous murderers. Brünnhilde is arguably the only sympathetic protagonist, being manipulated rather than knowingly choosing evil, and accepting her Heroic Sacrifice to try to undo the crimes of everyone else.
• Designated Villain: By the same token, a number of antagonistic characters are dealt with rather harshly.
  • Fasolt, an honest, humble and lonely giant who is genuinely in love with Freia and believed the building of Valhalla to be a sort of Engagement Challenge. Unlike the vast majority of characters, he doesn't go crazy about the Ring until Loge advises him to get it (and even then, it's not world domination that matters for him but the memory of Freia's look).
  • Hunding can be viewed as Lawful Evil. While he is a gruff and unfriendly man with a bad relationship with his wife, he is honourable (keeping his promise to let Siegmund spend the night), and according to the customs of his own culture he has done nothing wrong (it is clearly indicated that forced marriage and treating women like spoils of war is normal in the story's culture). He may want to kill Siegmund, but Siegmund has killed members of his clan.
• Ending Fatigue: It's worth noting that, in the era when the cycle was composed, patrons were expected to make an all-day event of them, bringing meals with them to the performance and even going home to freshen up during intermissions. Those unfamiliar with this fact therefore have a tendency to accuse the cycle as simply being "too long."
• Epic Riff: "The RIDE o' th' VAAALK'-ries, RIDE o' th' VAAALK'-ries, RIDE o' th' VAAAAAAAALK'-ries, RIDE o' th' VAAALK'-ries."
  • Or: "Kill da wabbit, kill da wabbit, kill da waabit!"
• Even Better Sequel: Die Walküre, the second of the four operas, is the most popular and widely-performed of the four, and the one which is most often performed as a standalone work. It also contains the most well-known and celebrated piece of music in Wagner's entire oeuvre, "The Ride of the Valkyries" (unless one considers that the Wedding March from Lohengrin).
• Harsher in Hindsight: Wotan punishes Brünnhilde for disobedience by stripping her of her power and reducing her to the status of a lowly wife. In Wagner's time, this would have been the standard role for a woman and would possibly have been seen as an Ironic Hell; however, in today's more emancipated world, many women can easily empathize with Brünnhilde's horror at the prospect.
• Karmic Overkill: Mime's fate can seem way too harsh. Yes, he wants the Nibelung treasures and the Ring of Power for himself, but he decides to go after them after being cruelly taunted and beaten by his own brother who usurps power in Nibelheim (before that, as Mime recalls, life was wonderful). Then he takes in baby Siegfried to raise him to fight Fafner (who owns the treasures). He treats Siegfried decently, clothing, feeding, teaching him and making toys for him, but Siegfried only taunts and humiliates him even more for years, even setting a bear on him For the Evulz. Then Wotan randomly drops in and bullies Mime a bit more, finally telling him he'll get killed. After that Mime snaps and starts planning to kill Siegfried, but with all the humiliation he endures before that for no particular fault of his own, it's hardly a shock.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The expression "It ain't over till the fat lady sings" is very possibly a reference to the end of the Ring^note although an even better case can be made for Tristan, which actually ends with Isolde's Liebestod. The last scene of Götterdämmerung, features Brünnhilde singing a exceedingly long farewell to the dead Siegfried („Starke Scheite schichtet mir dort!^note "Stout timbers stack for me there!"), although the very last vocal utterance of the work is Hagen's „Zurück vom Ring!"^note "[Keep] back from the Ring!".
  • This play is most likely where the misconception of Horny Vikings comes from.
• Music to Invade Poland to: Music from the Ring is often used as background music for scenes of Nazism-related activities; "Siegfried's Funeral March" has become almost a Standard Snippet for the fall of Nazi Germany.
• Narm Charm: Siegfried's line on seeing Brünnhilde for the first time, "Das ist kein Mann!" ("this is no man!") never fails to get an unintended laugh in any production where the audience understands the words, but it's so in-character for Siegfried, who after all has never seen a woman before in his life, that it gives some charm to a character who can come off as a Designated Hero.
• Newer Than They Think: Wagner's depiction of the three Rhine-daughters is largely a creation of his own imagination; though wise-women appear in the Danube in the 12th century Nibelungenlied, there is no indication that they are native to it, much less the daughters of its personified god, and they never go near the Rhine at all.
• Parody Displacement: Many 20th and 21st century American audiences are more familiar with the cycle's ultra-abridged seven minute animated version than the operas themselves.
• Values Dissonance: Nobody seems to think anything is wrong with Siegfried pulling Brunnhilde out of the ring of fire and dragging her down to Gibichung to marry Gunther against her will. Siegfried even shrugs it off, saying "Doch Frauengroll friedet sich bald" ^note "Women's anger is soon appeased". It's only when Brunnhilde claims she's already married to Siegfried that anybody has a problem with it.
• Vocal Range Exceeded: Being one of the first pieces ever written with it, Wagner's bass trumpet part can get hairy, to say the least, in terms of how high it goes. This trope might also apply to the contrabass trombone and higher horn parts.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Hagen, the bastard son of a dwarf, is treated with condescending, superficial respect (at best) by his legitimate half-brother Gunther, in spite of Hagen being more intelligent and capable. He wants revenge not only against his family, but against the entire world for making him an outcast and misfit.

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