Despite Peterson-Berger’s claim that nothing more needed to be said about the works, many critics, including Peterson-Berger himself, nev-ertheless did evaluate the music dramas after their Stockholm pre-mieres. However, Das Rheingold in 1901 was the last work for which these evaluations constituted a major part of the Stockholm reviews, a fact that is reflected in the relative length of the Rheingold discussion in this section of the article.
Das Rheingold (1901)
As mentioned above, Das Rheingold was the last Wagner premiere in Stockholm to be reviewed by Adolf Lindgren.2929 Lindgren, who also made the most extensive evaluation of the work by any Swedish crit-ic, was critical of many aspects. Yet, as in his review of Die Walküre in 1895, he was not as negative as he had been in Om Wagnerismen.
Lindgren stated that the impression of Das Rheingold differed in several
27 For instance by Lindgren in Aftonbladet 9 April 1900 and Valentin in Svenska Dagbladet 8 April 1900.
28 For instance by Peterson-Berger in Dagens Nyheter 14 May 1900, and Valentin in Svenska Dagbladet 11 April 1900.
29 Aftonbladet 28 October 1901.
respects from that of Die Walküre. For one thing, Das Rheingold was re-ally a prelude, one that preferably should be used to introduce the three following works; to a lesser degree than any of those, it was unsuitable for performance as a separate, complete drama. For another thing, the characters in Das Rheingold were less sympathetic than those in the rest of the tetralogy. According to Lindgren, this work spoke less to the heart than to the senses, and one did not warm to any of the char-acters in the same way as one was attracted to the noble Brünnhilde, the robustly healthy, but untried Siegfried and others.
Lindgren’s main objection was that, despite Wagner’s theory, the gap between words and music was larger than usual in Das Rheingold.
According to theory, the text should be the end and the music mere-ly the means, but then the music should not transform the text into something it was not per se. This, however, was exactly what had taken place in Das Rheingold. The theory Lindgren refers to is Wagner’s claim in the first pages of Oper und Drama that the mistake in the genre of opera was that a means of expression (music) had been made into an end, while the end of the expression (drama) was made into a means.3030 However, Lindgren misread Wagner. As Carl Dahlhaus pointed out, it was a common misunderstanding that Wagner used the term “drama”
to refer to the text, yet for Wagner the text was also a means, and not the same thing as the drama.3131
Lindgren argued that if you read the libretto without precon-ceived notions, for the most part it left the impression of a satirical Aristophanic comedy. However, in composing the text, Wagner forgot that he needed to be a dramatist as well as a musician, and he did not succeed in translating the basic satirical character into the music. The exception was Loge, a new Mephistopheles, who became the most inter-esting character and was conceived in a fully original and brilliant way.
Fortunately, there was another fundamental feature in the Rheingold
30 Wagner 1903, vol. 3, 231.
31 Dahlhaus 1971, 11. At least Peterson-Berger was aware of this misunderstanding, as is shown by his criticism of writer Oscar Levertin’s “lack of acquaintance with Wagner’s artistic ideas” in “Ett litet Wagnerkollegium”, Dagens Nyheter 30 June 1898.
libretto that was more suitable for musical interpretation than satire, especially given Wagner’s talent, and that was a sense of the fantastic.
Perhaps nowhere else, claimed Lindgren, had the master’s gift for the picturesque been so richly revealed as here: “The passion-free primor-dial state in the life of the elementary spirits, the diligent forging of the Nibelungs, the clumsy character of the giants, the electric discharges of nature and its eternal youth – everything is painted in brilliant col-ours.” 3232 But a result of this was that Das Rheingold was more concerned with tone painting than with expressing emotion. Therefore, Lindgren concluded, we are never as moved by this work as by the best parts of Die Walküre, “but we follow it with attention and delight as an enter-taining fairy-tale play”.3333
Many of the aspects discussed by Lindgren appeared in other re-views, too. The critic “n.” in Social-Demokraten also referred to Wagner’s reform theory, “the drama is the end, the music is only the means”, which had been fully implemented in the Ring where Wagner tried to establish the principles of his new dramatic style with all its merits, but also its flaws. According to “n.”, the flaws were obvious in Das Rheingold.
Those not already familiar with Wagner’s ability for formal organisa-tion would have admired only the composer’s mastery in the design of smaller sections, wrote “n.”, his ability to paint individual situations in a few bars with the most inexhaustible richness of colour. Examples of such situations were the Rhinemaidens’ trio in the first scene, Fricka’s answer to Wotan (“Um des Gatten Treue besorgt”) and Loge’s narra-tion about the treasure in the second scene, almost the complete third scene, and Erda’s warning and the entry of the gods into Valhalla in the fourth scene.3434 Another critic, Hilder Sandström in Stockholms Dagblad, however, was of the opinion that in comparison with Die Walküre, with
32 Aftonbladet 28 October 1901: “Det passionsfria urtillståndet i elementarandarnas lif, nibelungarnas smidesflit, jättarnas klumpiga väsen, naturens elektriska urladdningar och dess eviga ungdom – allt är måladt med glänsande färger.”
33 Ibid.: “men vi följa det med uppmärksamhet och tjusning såsom ett underhållande sagospel.”
34 Social-Demokraten 28 October 1901.
its Walkürenritt, Feuerzauber and Spring Song, Das Rheingold had few-er such highlights. In fact, thfew-ere was only the Rhinemaidens’ trio and the entry of the gods, even though there were numerous other, purely musical, beauties.3535
Albert Andersson Edenberg and Henrik Victorin both addressed the risks of performing Das Rheingold separately.3636 According to Edenberg, it was a matter of no small importance that Das Rheingold was only a prologue to a great trilogy. To be able to understand and appreciate this prelude fully, one needed to be familiar with the content of the following dramas. Because of Wagner’s ingenious characteriza-tion, the fairy-tale world of Das Rheingold appealed to and incited the imagination, but nothing more. It left the sense of reality unmoved, and appeared strange and fantastic if the experience was not con-nected with the trilogy as a whole. Henrik Victorin’s chief argument against performing Das Rheingold separately was that the character of Wotan, who was the embodiment of spiritual content in the Ring cycle, appeared small and insignificant, given that the great, sympathetic features that make him tragic are not found until Siegfried. Viewed in its organic context, wrote Victorin, Das Rheingold becomes something far greater, deeper and more moving than a mere spectacular play with impressive effects.
Magnus Josephson in Post- och Inrikes Tidningar was of the oppo-site opinion. As he saw it, Das Rheingold could be enjoyed on its own without the other Ring dramas as long as one viewed it as a fantastic fairy-tale opera on a subject from Old Norse mythology, and refrained from reading any deeper meanings or searching for more or less hazy symbolism in the work. Josephson also found Das Rheingold enjoyable because of its refreshing humour, which, with the exception of Siegfried, did not appear in the other Ring dramas. In contrast to the ancient Greek tragedians, though, Wagner placed the satyr play first in his Ring cycle. Thus, like Lindgren, Josephson considered Das Rheingold
35 Stockholms Dagblad 27 October 1901.
36 Sydsvenska Dagbladet Snällposten 29 January 1901. In Nya Dagligt Allehanda 28 January 1901 and Sydsvenska Dagbladet Snällposten 29 January 1901, respectively.
to be a comedy, but in contrast to Lindgren he did not criticize, the relationship between text and music in the realization of this aspect of the work.3737
What then was Peterson-Berger’s opinion of Das Rheingold in his first review of the Swedish premiere of a Wagner work?3838 He began by claiming that every Wagner drama has a specific fundamental mood, which the performance has to capture if the representation is to appear in any way moving or comprehensible. The characteristic mood of Das Rheingold is that of a prologue to a great musical-dramatic festival, which ought always to be celebrated during special circumstances that have a particular effect on the mood of the spectator.
Peterson-Berger pointed out that never before had he heard the work except as part of a complete Ring cycle.3939 Therefore, he had never realized so clearly as he did at the Stockholm premiere that the work acquires its fundamental mood from the dramas that follow and from the Ring’s character as a Bühnenfestspiel. When this fundamental mood is present, it can cover up many flaws in the staging (which involves many difficulties), and make the spectator so receptive and sensitive to the spirit and intention of the production that substantial weaknesses can be noticed without disrupting a favourable impression of the per-formance as a whole. But when this fundamental mood is missing, the conditions for Das Rheingold change. Then, above all, the weaknesses of the work itself come to light. This was one of the first times Peterson-Berger criticized Wagner, and he was obviously aware that, in doing so as a known pro-Wagner critic, he would be shocking Wagnerian read-ers. He thus exclaims: “Because – cross yourselves and pray, Wagner Catholics! – the work indeed has such [weaknesses].”4040
37 Post- och Inrikes Tidningar 28 October 1901.
38 Dagens Nyheter 27 January 1901. The review is reprinted in Peterson-Berger 1923, vol. 1, 144–149.
39 For instance, Peterson-Berger had seen the complete Ring in Bayreuth in 1899. His report, “Festspelen i Bayreuth: Nibelungens ring”, was published in Dagens Nyheter on 1 August 1899.
40 “Ty – korsen eder och åkallen, Wagner-katoliker! – stycket har verkligen sådana.”
According to Peterson-Berger, Das Rheingold was dependent on a stage apparatus that continuously, and in an incredibly unconstrained way, appealed to the indulgent participation of the spectator’s fantasy.
But worse, he argued, every imperfection, every lack of comprehension in the performance of the individual roles, appears with merciless clar-ity. In both respects the Stockholm premiere, despite the efforts that had been invested in the production, left a sense of disappointment. As performed at the Royal Opera, the work mainly gave the impression of a childish, naïve, albeit spectacular play.
Siegfried (1905)
As mentioned above, Peterson-Berger did not find it necessary to eval-uate the work itself after Siegfried’s Swedish premiere, and neither did several other critics. Among those who did make comments, no-one was opposed to Wagner per se or to the aspects of Wagnerian mu-sic drama that had so annoyed many critics after Die Meistersinger in 1887 and Die Walküre in 1895. Now the new work was measured only against the other Ring dramas. Concerning the dramatic action, “O.” in Social-Demokraten considered Siegfried the weakest in the cycle, more an enchanting idyll than a drama rich in action. However, if specta-tors found some scenes too diluted, they were fully compensated by the final scene, which featured the loftiest and most beautiful poetry to which audiences had ever been treated on the stage.4141 “Ln.” in Vårt Land also complained about the lack of dramatic vividness, and stated that the slow progression of the plot had a tiring effect. This explained why Siegfried was the least popular Ring drama when performed on its own. Wagner’s brilliant music, though, covered up for many of the dramatic weaknesses.4242
Other critics were more positive. According to “n.” in Aftonbladet, Siegfried was a magnificent and enchanting work, though it did not have
41 Social-Demokraten 11 December 1905.
42 Vårt Land 12 December 1905.
the tragic beauty or heroic pathos of Die Walküre.4343 Carl Lambère in Post- och Inrikes Tidningar made a similar observation, but added that it was only for the unprepared spectator that the music of Siegfried did not have the same immediate appeal as Die Walküre. But, of course, the music Wagner had created in Siegfried was just as admirable as in the other parts of the tetralogy, and Lambère considered the Ring to be a giant creation wherein Wagner’s ingenious talent as musician, poet and thinker shone with richer splendour than in any other of his many brilliant works. For the sympathetic listener who had studied Siegfried, the music, supported by the text, offered an abundance of beauty and poetry. Among the highlights Lambère mentioned Siegfried’s “famous Forging Song, in all respects a brilliant finale” to Act 1; in Act 2, “the ex-traordinarily beautiful and solemn depiction of nature”; and in the final act the great love scene between Siegfried and Brünnhilde.4444 Knowledge of the earlier Ring dramas was necessary, however, because no other part of the cycle was less able to stand alone than Siegfried: “Not with-out reason has the work been characterized as a kind of musical tor-so.”4545 This was also the opinion of Peterson-Berger, who claimed that only when performed in the context of the complete Ring did Siegfried appear to full advantage. When the work was performed separate-ly, many scenes seemed tedious and unclear, and certain “educated”
Wagner enthusiasts who pretended to be in raptures over these pas-sages, had perhaps only been sitting and staring “as a cow on a hypot-enuse”.4646 In contrast to Peterson-Berger, the critic “M.” in Stockholms-Tidningen was of the opinion that Siegfried, despite being isolated from
43 Aftonbladet 12 December 1905.
44 These are the same sections still today considered the highlights of Siegfried. For instance, these are the excerpts included on the Deutsche Grammophon CD with highlights from Siegfried conducted by James Levine (DGG 437 548-2, 1991).
45 Post- och Inrikes Tidningar 12 December 1905: “ryktbara smidessång, en i alla afseenden glänsande final”; “den utomordentligt vackra och stämningsfulla naturskildringen”;
“Man har också icke utan skäl betecknat verket som ett slags musikalisk torso.” Most likely Carl Lambère was the critic under the pseudonym “L.” According to Norlind 1916, vol. 2, 514, Lambère was a music critic for this paper between 1903 and 1909.
46 Dagens Nyheter 12 December 1905: “som en ko på en hypotenusa.”
a tetralogy that constituted a firm and indissoluble whole, really made the deepest kind of impression. The performance revealed an infinite number of rich poetic beauties, and an audience absolutely had to be captivated and feel moved by this masterly conception of a drama.4747
The most positive voice of all was that of the devout Wagnerian Karl Valentin, who by 1905 had had a long career as a pro-Wagner critic:
There were storms of applause. And it could hardly be otherwise. For the strong inspiration, permeating the whole work, and the powerful composition, which Wagner has created here, could not possibly fail in its effect. A music with the most variegated voices, which interpreted the most disparate human emotions. […] A music, finally, that with the originality, pregnancy and power of motivic invention unites the most ingenious combinations and the most charming colours with a harmon-ic, rhythmic richness, which even today appears new and interesting.4848
Götterdämmerung (1907)
After the Götterdämmerung’s premiere in 1907, even less was said about the work than had been the case with Siegfried two years earlier. It appears odd, claimed Peterson-Berger, to review a work as a novelty when it has been part of educated consciousness in all other coun-tries in Europe, and perhaps even America, for a long time.4949 And in
47 Stockholms-Tidningen 12 December 1905.
48 Göteborgs Handels- och Sjöfartstidning 12 December 1905: “Bifallet var intensivt. Och det kunde väl knappt annat vara. Ty den starka inspiration, som genomgår hela verket, och den mäktiga tonskapelse, som Wagner här frambragt, kunde ej gärna förfela sin verkan. En musik med de mest mångskiftande stämmor, som tolkade de mest olikartade mänskliga känslor […]. En musik slutligen, som med den motiviska uppfinningens originalitet, pregnans och kraft förenar de snillrikaste kombinationer och de mest bedårande färger på samma gång som en harmonisk, rytmisk rikedom, vilken i dag ter sig lika ny som intressant.”
49 Dagens Nyheter 1 March 1907. However, Peterson-Berger went to some length to object to what he considered to be contradictions and naïvetés in the story, especially the potion of forgetfulness, which in his opinion was neither dramatically nor symbolically motivated in a convincing way. The review is reprinted in Peterson-Berger 1923, vol. 1, 232–241.
Post- och Inrikes Tidningar, Carl Lambère did not find it necessary to undertake a musical analysis of the work: “Everyone well knows that it is the immense cornerstone in an ingeniously constructed and ac-complished gigantic music-dramatic work, which occupies a very spe-cial position in the history of music.” 5050 As Peterson-Berger had point-ed out in his Siegfripoint-ed review, Wagner had become a classic whose place in music history was uncontested. The pseudonym “Vidi” in Nya Dagligt Allehanda was that of another critic, who stated that nowa-days it was unnecessary to discuss the music, but added in passing that Götterdämmerung’s characteristic feature was the simultaneous combination of voices in ensembles and choruses, something that oc-curred only rarely in the preceding parts of the Ring, an effect also mentioned by several other critics.5151 Albert Andersson Edenberg was the only reviewer to evaluate the work, writing that Götterdämmerung was far more accomplished than the preceding Ring dramas in terms of grandiose conception and dramatic vividness. There were no dead spots, and the events followed each other quickly with an even, effective intensification, which culminated in the final catastrophe.5252
Tristan und Isolde (1909)
In Om Wagnerismen (1881), Adolf Lindgren considered Tristan und Isolde to be the work in which Wagner most consistently applied his theo-ries.5353 For this reason, according to Lindgren, it was Wagner’s least popular work. However, when Tristan had its premiere at the Royal Opera in 1909, almost 44 years after its first performance in Munich in 1865, it no longer appeared radically new. Carl Lambère in Post- och Inrikes Tidningar pointed out that, on the one hand, several excerpts,
50 Post- och Inrikes Tidningar 1 March 1907: “Alla veta för visso väl, att det är den väldiga slutstenen i ett till sin anläggning och sin genomföring genialt musik-dramatiskt jätteverk, som inom musikhistorien intager sin alldeles särskilda rangplats.”
51 Nya Dagligt Allehanda 1 March 1907.
52 Sydsvenska Dagbladet Snällposten 4 March 1907.
53 Lindgren 1881, 44–45, 50.
both instrumental and vocal, had been played at symphony concerts and in other contexts; on the other hand, audiences had been accus-tomed to the “peculiar sounds” (“säregna klangerna”) through the un-constrained borrowings from the Tristan score by many young com-posers, both German and non-German.5454 Ture Rangström in Svenska Dagbladet also stressed the importance of Tristan’s influence on con-temporary composers, and therefore Tristan harmonies, Wagner se-quences and Wagner modulations were familiar concepts, even to those
both instrumental and vocal, had been played at symphony concerts and in other contexts; on the other hand, audiences had been accus-tomed to the “peculiar sounds” (“säregna klangerna”) through the un-constrained borrowings from the Tristan score by many young com-posers, both German and non-German.5454 Ture Rangström in Svenska Dagbladet also stressed the importance of Tristan’s influence on con-temporary composers, and therefore Tristan harmonies, Wagner se-quences and Wagner modulations were familiar concepts, even to those