# Hunding



## kangxi (Jan 24, 2014)

If Wagner intended Hunding, through his words and actions, to be viewed as a despicable rapist and violent bully, I wonder why he gave him some of the noblest music in the entire Ring cycle.


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

Hunding is a typical pagan Germanic tribal member - supermacho, possessive of his wife Sieglinde . 
I don't think he's evil per se and while he's hardly a model husband we don't know he has actually raped her . 
Naturally, when his number one enemy Sigmund , who is also Sieglinde's long lost twin brother , runs off with her after having given him a sleeping potion, he's mad as hell and prays to Fricka, the goddess of marriage and pagan Germanic family values, for vengeance . His music strikes me as more sinister than noble .


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

I don't hear nobility, exactly, but I hear strength and pride - which, however, might be marks of nobility among Hunding's folk (and it's just Wagner's genius to suggest this in the music). I also hear sternness and threat.

Hunding isn't a villain; as superhorn says, he's a more or less typical man of his culture and station, a bit brutal but righteous in defending what's his - which, in that culture, includes his wife. Siegmund and Sieglinde, of course, are the children of "Wolf," the persona through which Wotan expresses the side of himself that struggles against conventional morality. I find the music given to the Walsungs much nobler than that of Hunding; it attains its greatest power in the poignant funeral march for Siegfried, the last of Wolf's tragic line.


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

In a recent Berlin production of Die Walkure , the director , whose name I don't recall , added a silent character tot he first act : Sieglinde and Hunding already have a son ! At the end of the act, Sieglinde kills the boy, who would have been Siegfried's older half brother !
Holy moly ! Oy vey ! Yikes ! Just when you think Eurotrash productions couldn't get any loonier , the directors and designers always surpass themselves .
I wonder if the imaginary son of Sieglinde and Hunding was named Roy and survived .
Then a new opera called "Siegfried and Roy" could have been written by some comenteporary German composer .


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

^
^

Great art should be protected from that kind of gratuitous bowdlerising. It reminds me of the extravagant Regency-era actor Robert Coates who often distorted the script or made it up as he went along just so he could draw more attention to himself and his dazzling costumes (he was supposed to have been an awful actor).


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

superhorn said:


> In a recent Berlin production of Die Walkure , the director , whose name I don't recall , added a silent character tot he first act : Sieglinde and Hunding already have a son ! At the end of the act, Sieglinde kills the boy, who would have been Siegfried's older half brother !


I wonder if it's Holocaust guilt that leads German directors to hate their own culture.


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## Music Snob (Nov 14, 2018)

Woodduck said:


> I wonder if it's Holocaust guilt that leads German directors to hate their own culture.


Perhaps but this phenomena of bastardizing Art is not relegated to Germany...

Not to be melodramatic but is it strange that it breaks my heart?


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## JTS (Sep 26, 2021)

Music Snob said:


> Perhaps but this phenomena of bastardizing Art is not relegated to Germany...
> 
> Not to be melodramatic but is it strange that it breaks my heart?


Doesn't break my heart. I just withdraw my custom.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Woodduck said:


> I wonder if it's Holocaust guilt that leads German directors to hate their own culture.


I think it's more like the easiest way to generate press interest is to make it controversial. Pop music suffers from the same affliction, the bar is constantly being lowered on taste and decency.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Couchie said:


> I think it's more like the easiest way to generate press interest is to make it controversial. Pop music suffers from the same affliction, the bar is constantly being lowered on taste and decency.


I've concluded that the bar is being lowered on everything.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Woodduck said:


> I've concluded that the bar is being lowered on everything.


Yeah too bad people don't realize civilization is playing limbo, not pole vault.


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## Valiowk (Jul 13, 2020)

superhorn said:


> In a recent Berlin production of Die Walkure , the director , whose name I don't recall , added a silent character tot he first act : Sieglinde and Hunding already have a son ! At the end of the act, Sieglinde kills the boy, who would have been Siegfried's older half brother !
> Holy moly ! Oy vey ! Yikes ! Just when you think Eurotrash productions couldn't get any loonier , the directors and designers always surpass themselves .


I don't know the details of this production and whether the rest of this production was 'loony', but in the _Vǫlsunga saga_, Signy sends her first two children with Siggeir to Sigmund to test whether the boys will be able to help them avenge the death of the Volsungs, and when they fail Sigmund's test, Signy asks Sigmund to kill them. So the idea itself isn't loony-it's even drawn from the same source that Wagner drew from-rather, it's a matter of whether it's appropriate to include it given Wagner's modifications to the story.

Similarly, in the Copenhagen Ring, the idea of Brünnhilde having a child comes from the _Saga of Ragnar Loðbrók_, but whether it is appropriate or not at the end of the Immolation scene is a completely different matter.

At the end of Harry Kupfer's Berlin production of the Ring, two children are shown holding on to a piece of the world-ash as Walhall burns. They represent Líf and Lífþrasir, two humans who are foretold to survive the events of Ragnarǫk by hiding in a wood called Hoddmímis holt (believed to be another name for Yggdrasill) and later repopulate the world. I've always found this last example to say volumes about Kupfer's mastery of Norse mythology and appropriate additional borrowings from Norse mythology.


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## Music Snob (Nov 14, 2018)

Valiowk said:


> I don't know the details of this production and whether the rest of this production was 'loony', but in the _Vǫlsunga saga_, Signy sends her first two children with Siggeir to Sigmund to test whether the boys will be able to help them avenge the death of the Volsungs, and when they fail Sigmund's test, Signy asks Sigmund to kill them. So the idea itself isn't loony-it's even drawn from the same source that Wagner drew from-rather, it's a matter of whether it's appropriate to include it given Wagner's modifications to the story.
> 
> Similarly, in the Copenhagen Ring, the idea of Brünnhilde having a child comes from the _Saga of Ragnar Loðbrók_, but whether it is appropriate or not at the end of the Immolation scene is a completely different matter.
> 
> At the end of Harry Kupfer's Berlin production of the Ring, two children are shown holding on to a piece of the world-ash as Walhall burns. They represent Líf and Lífþrasir, two humans who are foretold to survive the events of Ragnarǫk by hiding in a wood called Hoddmímis holt (believed to be another name for Yggdrasill) and later repopulate the world. I've always found this last example to say volumes about Kupfer's mastery of Norse mythology and appropriate additional borrowings from Norse mythology.


Thank you for this informative post!


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Valiowk said:


> I don't know the details of this production and whether the rest of this production was 'loony', but in the _Vǫlsunga saga_, Signy sends her first two children with Siggeir to Sigmund to test whether the boys will be able to help them avenge the death of the Volsungs, and when they fail Sigmund's test, Signy asks Sigmund to kill them. So *the idea itself isn't loony-it's even drawn from the same source that Wagner drew from-rather, it's a matter of whether it's appropriate to include it given Wagner's modifications to the story.*


That is indeed the matter. In Wagner's version of the story, no children are mentioned or suggested and we have no reason to think that Sieglinde would emulate Medea. I can more easily imagine Hunding killing a child Sieglinde left behind, especially a girl.



> Similarly, in the Copenhagen Ring, the idea of Brünnhilde having a child comes from the _Saga of Ragnar Loðbrók_, but whether it is appropriate or not at the end of the Immolation scene *is a completely different matter.*


Indeed it is. Completely.



> At the end of Harry Kupfer's Berlin production of the Ring, two children are shown holding on to a piece of the world-ash as Walhall burns. They represent Líf and Lífþrasir, two humans who are foretold to survive the events of Ragnarǫk by hiding in a wood called Hoddmímis holt (believed to be another name for Yggdrasill) and later repopulate the world. I've always found this last example to say volumes about Kupfer's mastery of Norse mythology and appropriate additional borrowings from Norse mythology.


How does the audience know who these children are, why they're there, and what it is they're holding? Of what use are fragments of a tree that supposedly died? Neither the Norns nor Waltraute describe any part of the World Ash as being preserved by anyone. And, last but not least, Wagner's _Gotterdammerung_ is nothing like the Norse Ragnarok, either in form or significance, and the population of the world is not endangered.

I find nothing impressive in the fact that directors may be familiar with parts of Wagner's mythological sources that he chose not to use for what he surely considered good reasons. These too-clever people might better spend their time writing new libretti for new operas than parasitizing old ones that make better artistic sense without their help.

Your post is interesting, though. Evidently you've engaged in some research that will be of interest to me and others. Welcome to the forum.


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## Valiowk (Jul 13, 2020)

Woodduck said:


> Your post is interesting, though. Evidently you've engaged in some research that will be of interest to me and others. Welcome to the forum.


Thanks for the welcome! I grew up on Norse mythology and it inevitably colours my perception of the Ring, although I do my best to separate the two. Nevertheless, it has the effect that my gold standard is a singer who makes their character feel as though they walked out of the Norse myths. It also has the consequence that I can tell you weird facts such as that the characters in the Ring have their names accented on the first syllable probably because the accent always falls on the first syllable in Old Norse (and modern Icelandic).



Woodduck said:


> How does the audience know who these children are, why they're there, and what it is they're holding? Of what use are fragments of a tree that supposedly died? Neither the Norns nor Waltraute describe any part of the World Ash as being preserved by anyone. And, last but not least, Wagner's Gotterdammerung is nothing like the Norse Ragnarok, either in form or significance, and the population of the world is not endangered.


In Kupfer's case I think it was a harmless 'in-joke' for the part of the audience familiar with Norse mythology that even they would have to _reinterpret_ in the context of _Götterdämmerung_, just like the rest of the audience who wasn't familiar with it-the children would probably live with or without that piece of the world-ash, so the focus isn't really on it, it's on the human children who will be responsible for building a new world. At the same time, for those who choose to read more into it, it's reasonable to think of it as being a reminder that there was a world before our modern one, even if it's mostly gone now, and the 'fate of the gods' isn't necessarily something that humans are oblivious to-societal changes often seem scary at the time even if they wind up being beneficial. Or maybe I'm just reading too much into it coloured by my knowledge of Norse mythology.


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

While all these facts may be true of the ancient Scandinavian epics , I doubt Wagner would have approved of giving Siegfried s half-brother !


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## lextune (Nov 25, 2016)

He definitely would not have approved.

For those who may not know, Wagner was _extremely_ well-versed in the subject, and as Woodduck previously mentioned; he choose what to use, and not use, for what he surely considered good reasons.

This viewer/listener, would prefer directors explore those reasons rather than impose their own. But as the saying goes, I'm sure people in Hell want ice water.


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## JTS (Sep 26, 2021)

superhorn said:


> While all these facts may be true of the ancient Scandinavian epics , I doubt Wagner would have approved of giving Siegfried s half-brother !


Of course in reality sieglinde would have had several children by Hunding unless the latter was sterile or impotent!


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## Valiowk (Jul 13, 2020)

lextune said:


> He definitely would not have approved.
> 
> For those who may not know, Wagner was _extremely_ well-versed in the subject, and as Woodduck previously mentioned; he choose what to use, and not use, for what he surely considered good reasons.
> 
> This viewer/listener, would prefer directors explore those reasons rather than impose their own. But as the saying goes, I'm sure people in Hell want ice water.





JTS said:


> Of course in reality sieglinde would have had several children by Hunding unless the latter was sterile or impotent!


I think that even before one goes into 'what Wagner wanted/did not want to use from the source material', there's already the concern of telling a tight story from a purely storytelling perspective, especially in the format of opera where time is limited. While it is realistic that Sieglinde would have had children by Hunding unless he was impotent, it would also raise the issue of the librettist/composer having to deal with their fate by the end of Act II, unless one just intends to leave their fate unknown. While Signy asks Sigmund to kill her sons by Siggeir after they fail Sigmund's test, I don't think she does this purely out of revenge-I think she is afraid that sons who do not live up to the standards of a Vǫlsung may also give Sigmund away, which she cannot afford to risk. But all this needs a background to be understood in context, and (i) Wagner simply does not have the time in the opera to dwell on details like this, (ii) Wagner has already changed the background so much in changing Siggeir to Hunding that copying the events of the _Vǫlsunga saga_ wholesale doesn't work anymore because it is unlikely to stand up to reinterpretation in the context of _Die Walküre_. (By the way, when reading the _Vǫlsunga saga_, it always puzzled me how Vǫlsung managed to choose such a son-in-law! Perhaps Wagner felt the same when he changed this part of the story!) Leaving out all the half-brothers provides for a tighter story and moreover is much easier. The same happens in other parts of the Ring-there are times when I feel Wagner cut a bit too much from the Eddas and sagas that would otherwise make his characters stand in a better light, but given the time constraint imposed by the format it's understandable.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

JTS said:


> Of course in reality sieglinde would have had several children by Hunding unless the latter was sterile or impotent!


Especially if they lived in Texas.


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> Especially if they lived in Texas.


Cruel! Fair but cruel. 

This definition holds true for many places: Texan virgin is a girl who can run faster than her brother. This will probably be excised. C'est la vie.


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