Take advantage of special rates from 28 January to 4 February! The Ring, an allegory of triumphant 19th century capitalism. A new production of Castor et Pollux is staged at the Palais Garnier. Director Peter Sellars will discuss with tenor Reinoud Van Mechelen the themes and music of this lyrical tragedy by Jean-Philippe Rameau, revived in its original version of Palais Garnier from 20 Jan to 23 Feb Begun in β the year in which Marx and Engels published their Communist Party Manifesto β the conception of The Ring of the Nibelung was contemporaneous with the revolutionary events in Dresden in which Wagner took part alongside the anarchist Bakunin.
Within this context of insurrection, the composer formulated an economic and social critique of his own era, several facets of which inform The Ring. In accordance with this, his artistic oeuvre did not remain indifferent to either the phenomena of rampant industrialisation in the second half of the 19th century, or the rising tide of the capitalist system.
Although the scenario of the Ring draws on ancient Germanic and Scandinavian myths, Wagner brings them up to date in a rather spectacular manner, and stages a veritable allegory of the 19th century world, placing much emphasis on the questioning of power relationships and the place of man and nature in modern society. In the scene of the Nibelheim in particular, he paints a truly sombre picture of a universe in which the proletariat is ruthlessly exploited by the new dominant class, embodied by Alberich.
Everything is there: the deafening racket of the forges, the columns of vapour and the stench of sulphur, the foggy half-light interrupted by showers of sparks, not forgetting the piercing cries of the Nibelungen people enslaved by a tyrannical and megalomaniac master. The composer himself suggests a parallel between the forges of the Nibelheim and the industrial sites that sprang up throughout Europe in the second half of the 19th century.
References to economic relations in the modern capitalist world are not, however, limited to a few isolated tableaux, however spectacular they may be; they underpin the entire Cycle and are articulated around an important symbol, the ring. It is around the latter that cupidity, egotism and the desire for power in all its forms, are crystallised.
