Just fishing for opinions here.
A rough, selective outline of the story of
Swan Lake. The hero, Siegfried, falls in love with the leader of the swan maidens and promises to be faithful to her. However, back in the real world he is tricked into proposing to the wrong girl and so breaks his promise. This proves catastrophic and he ends up dead, together with his first love, in a dénouement which involves a body of water (the lake) rising up and drowning the stage.
A rough, selective outline of the story of
Götterdämmerung. The hero, Siegfried, falls in love with the leader of the valkyries and promises to be faithful to her. However, back in the real world, he is tricked into proposing to the wrong girl and so breaks his promise. This proves catastrophic and he ends up dead, together with his first love, in a dénouement which involves a body of water (the river Rhine) rising up and drowning the stage.
We all know that valkyries are swan maidens, right?
Now it's true that's selective and there are many differences between the stories, most importantly in my opinion the absence of a Gunther character in
Swan Lake. However, here's the thing. When an artist takes a basic story or other idea and uses it in a new work, he re-conceptualises it, changes the context and creates something new. He doesn't just file off the serial numbers. (And in this case Tchaikowsky doesn't actually appear to have filed off the most important serial number, the hero's name.)
The origin of the story of
Götterdämmerung is well known. It's a very clever mash-up of essentially two versions of the Sigurd/Siegfried myth, the
Volsunga Saga and the
Nibelunenlied, with bits of the
Thidrik's Saga and other versions of the story thrown in. I had originally vaguely imagined that
Swan Lake was based on one or another of the several versions of the same myth in existence, however that is not the case. Wikipedia states that the origin of the story is not known (nobody seems to have asked Tchaikowsky?)
Quote:
There is no evidence to prove who wrote the original libretto, or where the idea for the plot came from. Russian and German folk tales have been proposed as possible sources, including "The Stolen Veil" by Johann Karl August Musäus, but both those tales differ significantly from the ballet.
One theory is that the original choreographer, Julius Reisinger, who was a Bohemian (and therefore likely to be familiar with The Stolen Veil), created the story. Another theory is that it was written by Vladimir Petrovich Begichev, director of the Moscow Imperial Theatres at the time, possibly with Vasily Geltser, danseur of the Moscow Imperial Bolshoi Theatre...
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It's noteworthy that the closest resemblance to the Swan Lake story is the
Götterdämmerung mash-up itself, not any of the source legends. There is also only one legend involving a hero called Siegfried (or sometimes Sigurd), the one about the dragonslayer who was tricked into betraying his valkyrie love and marrying the wrong girl, although it occurs in multiple versions.
Now here's the coincidence. The text of
Götterdämmerung was first published in about 1853, but Wagner didn't compose the music until much later, between 1869 and 1874. Work began quite soon thereafter on the first stage performance which occurred in July 1876. This was a very big deal in the musical world, Wagner finally finishing the magnum opus he'd been working on since 1848. The story was hardly a secret, having been published some time previously, and musical scores were also published I believe. I doubt if there were many musicians who were unaware of what was being produced.
Tchaikowsky wrote
Swan Lake in 1875-76 and its première was in 1877. So at exactly the time Swan Lake was being created, the musical world was buzzing with the culmination of the story of Siegfried who swore to be eternally faithful to a valkyrie (a swan maiden), was tricked into proposing to the wrong girl, broke his vow, and ended up dead with his original beloved in a catastrophe involving the nearby body of water rising in a flood.
My somewhat half-baked theory is that Tchaikowsky was influenced by
Götterdämmerung and based the core of his story on that, although much re-worked. Whether this was homage, or jumping on the bandwagon, or whether the story of the hero marrying the wrong woman through trickery was simply something that inspired him I don't know. I also think he expected people to get it (bandwagon?), hence not changing the hero's name, but when they didn't he just left the origin of his story a mystery.
Any thoughts, assuming anyone even reads this subforum any more? Am I completely wrong or is there possibly something in this?
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