Musically, some prefer Tristan and Isolde, but in the matter of dramatic power and richness of meaning, Wotan’s final aria in The Valkyrie, “Leb Wohl” (Farewell), is doubtless the pinnacle of Richard Wagner’s work. What does that have to do with Christmas? Hold on a while, and let me recall the scene.
Pressured by his wife Fricka, who urges him to fulfill his duties as maintainer of the cosmic order, Wotan, the Germanic counterpart of Zeus, unwillingly promises to punish by death his grandson Siegmund—guilty of adultery and incest with his sister Sieglinde. To achieve this goal, Wotan sends his dearest daughter, Brünnhilde, to the place where Sieglinde’s husband will fight a duel with Siegmund, to ensure that Siegmund, deprived of all divine assistance, is killed in the duel. At the decisive moment, Brünnhilde allows herself to be overcome with compassion for Siegmund, and disobeying the order she received, attempts to protect him. Wotan has to intervene personally, breaking Siegmund’s magic sword into pieces and letting him be killed by Sieglinde’s husband, Hunding. As soon as the duel comes to an end, Wotan, displeased with himself and full of contempt for the winner, kills Hunding with a simple puff of breath. Now the king of the gods has to punish his daughter, in order not to permit that an act of treason disturbs the order of Valhalla, the heaven of the Germanic gods. Tormented by the insoluble conflict between the duties of rulership and paternal love, Wotan complains that he himself among all beings is the most suffering and miserable one. At the moment that he prepares to kill Brünnhilde, she appeals to her father’s compassion, requesting that her death sentence may be substituted for banishment. Wotan tenderly embraces his daughter and soothes her into sleep on a mountain peak protected by a ring of fire, promising that no unworthy man will ever touch her and that, when she awakes as a human creature, deprived of divine powers, she will have for a husband a noble warrior, who will protect her from all evil. Wotan bids his daughter farewell and, while she is falling asleep, departs downcast, defeated by his own power.
This episode marks the instant at which the order of the mythological world falls into contradiction with itself and discovers its limit. Compassion has no place in the world of gods. Only in the human world will Brünnhilde be allowed to enjoy the benefits of the forgiveness that her father so ardently wishes to grant her. At this moment, the law of the gods admits that there is a higher justice than that of Wotan-Zeus himself. The cosmic order can only be restored through Wotan’s sacrifice, but he himself understands this as absurd suffering, incongruity, irregularity. When Brünnhilde awakes, she will be in a new world, where the god’s self-sacrifice will no longer be an irregularity, but rather the very principle of the law governing the universe. The nameless and invisible God who reigns far above Wotan offers his own Son in sacrifice, because He knows that no human sacrifice can restore order: only the blood of God Himself has such power. Wotan’s farewell is the ancient world taking its leave, lowering his head before a higher order which Wotan himself obeys, but cannot comprehend.
It is the advent of this new world, the coming to the universal awareness of this new order, where forgiveness is not an exception but the rule, which is celebrated at Christmas. There, Wotan’s uncommon gesture will be the general and eternal law, which restores the order of the world not just once, but at every moment, over and over again, injecting ever new possibilities coming from the infinite love into the finite world. What follows Wotan’s farewell, after the curtain is drawn down upon the mythological scene, is the birth of Christ, the advent of the New Alliance where Brünnhilde will be forgiven not only once, but infinite times. Forgiveness is not a rare and exceptional act, which, in the name of paternal love, deceives the cosmic order almost in an underhanded way. Forgiveness is the fundamental law of the universe, the very basis of all existence.
(Translated by Alessandro Cota)
ftp://camerata.mine.nu/hines/Jerome%20Hines-Leb%20Wohl%201961%20Bayreuth.mp3