Brünnhilde’s Lament—The Mourning Play of the Gods: Reading Wagner’s Musical Dramas with Benjamin’s Theory on Music

Departing from Linda Watson’s interpretation of Brünnhilde in the last part of Götterdämmerung, Sigrid Weigel’s lecture, Brünnhilde’s Lament—The Mourning Play of the Gods, discusses correspondences between Wagner’s musical dramas and the mourning play—in contrast to a most common view that sees Wagner’s operas in the line of Greek tragedies. However, the argument is not just a question of the dramaturgical structure of the plays. It rather concerns a deeper affinity of mourning play and music as Benjamin has outlined in the paragraph on opera of his On the Origin of German Mourning Plays, and furthermore it concerns the origin of music from lament as Benjamin has outlined in his earlier theory of music. In it the dissolving (Auflösung) of the abyss between language and affects in music takes the place of redemption (Erlösung) in the baroque theatre. This lecture discusses theses connections in concentrating on some scenes from the Ring and Parsifal (including examples from productions form Chéreau, Freyer, and Herheim).