By Jeanne Stanek
Taking the dragon’s place in opera, the dragon Fafnar appears in the opera Siegried, the third of the four epic musical dramas that constitute Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung), by Richard Wagner which premiered at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus on 16 August 1876, as part of the first complete performance of The Ring cycle.
Siegried is the legendary dragon slayer written about in stories of Norse Mythology from as early as the 11th century. Richard Wagner was fascinated by folk tales and medieval legends. Like many in the 19th century, he felt that these stories held profound truths about contemporary culture and society, and so he immersed himself in the great Norse sagas, relying heavily on Norse mythology in creating his version of Siegried and naming his son Siegfreid, in honor of the dragon slayer.
As one of the earliest known dragon slayers, the warrior Siegried, in the German version, or Sigurd in the Scandinavian version, lived so long ago that the facts of his dragon-battle are greatly muddled. Some people believe that he slew the dragon Fafnar to rescue a captive maiden; in other accounts he was simply looking for treasure. In these myths, dragons often traditionally guarded treasure, whether it be material as in gold or symbolic as in knowledge. Fafner fits into this tradition in Wagner’s version as he guards treasures. However, Fafner is first a man and a symbol of greed, who kills his father, gets treasures from the gods including the Ring, and then transforms himself into a dragon to protect and defend his treasures in a deep forest. Wotan, the god, warns Fafner that a hero will come and fight him for the Ring.
Fafner, awakened by the sound of Siegried’s horn, rears up to attack Siegried. Siegried then plunges his sword through the dragon’s heart causing the dragon’s blood to splash on him. He bathes in the dragon’s magic blood which makes his skin invulnerable except for one spot on his back which is covered by a leaf. Before Fafner dies, he warns Siegried that whoever sent him to the cave is also planning to kill him, and the stolen ring comes with a curse that it would destroy whoever owns it. Before The Ring ends, Siegfreid is killed by Hotan who knows the dragon’s vulnerable area and stabs Siegried in the back. Aria is Here
In this aria, tenor Clay Hilley with Deutsche Opera Berlin, sings the titular character’s Siegried slays the Dragon.
With the founding of the German Empire in1871, the German view of Siegried became more nationalistic: Siegried was seen as an identifying epic figure for the new Germany, equated with Otto von Bismarck “reuniting” the German nation. Numerous paintings, monuments, and fountains of Siegried date from this time period. Following the defeat of Germany in WWI Siegried’s murder by Hagen was extensively used in right-wing propaganda that claimed that leftist German politicians had stabbed the undefeated German army in the back by agreeing to an armistice. This comparison was explicitly made by Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf leading to Nazi propaganda using Siegried “to symbolize the qualities of healthy and virile German men”.
In Sweden today, surviving depictions of Sigurd/ Siegried are frequently found in churches or on crosses; this is likely because Sigurd’s defeat of the dragon was seen as prefiguring Christ’s defeat of Satan.
As for the opera Siegried, it is one on the most difficult roles for a tenor and continues for about four hours. The entire Ring Cycle is shown over four days and lasts fourteen hours and remains extremely popular worldwide.