August 17, 1876: Götterdämmerung premieres, as part of the opening festival of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus in Bayreuth, Bavaria, Germany. It is the 1st performance in the final part of Richard Wagner's operas, Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung). Richard Wagner (pronounced "REE-kard VOG-ner"), 61 years old at the time, had the concert hall designed to his specifications, and, in a 5-day stretch, it produced all 4 parts of the "Ring Cycle":
* August 13: Das Rheingold (The Rhine Gold). Premiering in Munich in 1869, it tells the story from Norse mythology of Alberich, from the race of dwarves known as the titular Nibelung, stealing gold from the Rhine River in Germany, and making an all-powerful ring from it. Wotan (usually written as "Odin"), king of the Norse gods, steals the ring, and Alberich puts a curse on the ring and its possessors. (J.R.R. Tolkien wouldn't publish The Hobbit until 1937.)
* August 14: Die Walküre (The Valkyrie). Premiering in Munich in 1870, it tells of the valkyrie Brünnhilde, who saves the lives of the unwittingly incestuous couple Sieglinde and Siegmund, and of the retribution of the gods that each of them must face.
* August 15: A night off.
* August 16: Siegfried. As with Götterdämmerung the next evening, this was the 1st performance of this opera.
* August 17: Götterdämmerung (The Twilight of the Gods -- in Norse, Ragnarök). A final battle occurs, and the world as the Norse gods knew it is destroyed, and humanity must start over without them.
The Cycle was one of the greatest successes in the history of classical music, and, despite its length and its elaborate costuming, remains popular today. This is in spite of the familiar jab, "Wagner's music is better than it sounds." This is one of many quotes attributed to Mark Twain. Of course, many quotes attributed to Twain actually came from other people, but this one may be real.
It is also in spite of the fact that it has led to the association of horned helmets with the Norse gods and Viking warriors. Such headgear would be ridiculous, because it would give an opponent something to grab onto, and hold a fighter in place. Still, football teams named the Vikings, including the NFL team in Minnesota, with its large population of people of Scandinavian descent, have renderings of horns as their helmet logo.
It's also given rise to the image of Brünnhilde as a fat woman wearing armor and a horned helmet, and the stereotyping of female opera singers in general as fat. As Brünnhilde is the last character to sing in the Cycle, it led to the expression, "The opera ain't over 'til the fat lady sings."
The Cycle's popularity is also in spite of the fact of Wagner's recorded anti-Semitism, and thus his music's embrace by the Nazis over half a century later, particularly by Adolf Hitler himself. Since the story ties ancient Germany to the Norse mythology (however dubiously), Hitler once gave a speech saying that Wagner's works "glorified the heroic Teutonic nature." He ordered that Wagner's music be played at many Nazi events.
(Not all Nazis liked it, though: Hanns Johst, a poet approved by the Nazis, said, "When I hear the word 'culture,' I reach for my gun." That line is usually misattributed to Hitler's second-in-command, Hermann Göring.)
Act 3 of Die Walküre begins with an orchestral piece titled Ritt der Walküren, or Ride of the Valkyries. Lasting only 3 minutes, it is Wagner's best-remembered composition, and has been used in many films and TV shows, sometimes in parody.
D.W. Griffith used it for his silent film epic Birth of a Nation in 1915 (as if Wagner hadn't been connected to bigotry enough). Francis Ford Coppola used it for a helicopter scene in his 1979 Vietnam War film Apocalypse Now -- although, in the Ring Cycle, it's Götterdämmerung that is the apocalypse.
In 1957, Warner Brothers made the Bugs Bunny cartoon What's Opera, Doc? in which Elmer Fudd, wearing a Viking "magic helmet," claims, singing to the tune, that he wants to "Kill de wabbit, kill de wabbit, kill de wabbit!" And he does, and yet is remorseful over it. The movie ends with Bugs coming back to life, breaking the fourth wall, and saying, "Well, what did you expect in an opera, a happy ending?"
Because the field of play for boxing is known as a ring, even though it is square in modern times, the Rocky films have also been nicknamed "The Ring Cycle."
Wagner died in 1883, at age 68, still a big musical star by the standards of the era, but before any of this legacy was cemented.
Katharina Wagner, great-granddaughter of Richard, a great-great-granddaughter of Hungarian pianist and composer Franz Liszt, and a noted opera singer and director in her own right, is the current director of the annual Bayreuth Festival. She had previously co-run it with her much-older half-sister, Eva Wagner-Pasquier, who retired in 2010.
Katharina Wagner
In 2010, she announced that she was going to visit Israel, to invite the Israel Chamber Orchestra to come to the 2011 Bayreuth Festival, in the hopes of reconciliation between her ancestor's music and the people it indirectly harmed. The angry response of Holocaust survivors led her to cancel the visit, and Wagner's works are still banned in Israel. In 2015, she had the concert hall, now named the Richard-Wagner-Festpielhaus, renovated to modern standards of safety and comfort.
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August 17, 1876 was a Thursday. It was the 1st season of baseball's National League, and 2 games were played. The Philadelphia Athletics beat the New York Mutuals, 13-5 at the Jefferson Street Grounds in Philadelphia. Both of these teams folded after the season, and these Philadelphia Athletics bear no connection besides name to the American League team founded in 1901, and since 1968 playing in Oakland.
And the St. Louis Brown Stockings beat the Chicago White Stockings, 3-0 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. The White Stockings still exist, and since 1903 have been known as the Chicago Cubs. The American League team founded in 1901 took the former name, and since 1904 have been known as the Chicago White Sox, predating the Boston team's use of "Red Sox" by 3 years.
The Brown Stockings lasted until 1877, and a new team founded in 1882 took up the name "St. Louis Browns," becoming the St. Louis Cardinals in 1900. In 1902, the St. Louis team in the American League took the Browns name. There were several ballparks named Sportsman's Park in St. Louis, all built on the same site on the city's north side. The last one opened in 1909 as the home of the Browns. The Cardinals moved in for the 1920 season. The Browns moved in 1954 to become the Baltimore Orioles, and the Cardinals left in 1966, moving downtown to Busch Memorial Stadium.
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