Wagner-Dampf: Steam in Der Ring des Nibelungen and Operatic Production

Abstract

Santa Barbara, 1945. In his last novel, the exiled Austrian writer Franz Werfel catapults himself 100,000 years forward in time to a distant planet. Here, on the “Star of the Unborn,” he encounters the performance of something described to him by an indigenous gentleman as a “total work of art.” The time-traveling narrator is alarmed: “Gesamtkunstwerk,” I interrupted him, startled out of my composure, “I've heard that word before. Moreover, it seems to me I've heard the thing itself before. It usually lasts five hours. Steam rises from below along with wonderful music that has no beginning and no end, and the bearded singer in the wolf's pelt nervously shifts his long spear from one hand to the other …”1

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