Brünnhilde's Lament: The Mourning Play of the Gods. Reading Wagner's Musical Drama with Benjamin's Theory of Music

The article argues that Wagner’s ‘musical drama’ is more in the tradition of the German ‘Trauerspiel’ than ancient tragedies by referring to the passage on the opera in Benjamin’s book on the German mourning play. This thesis gets concretized with the example of the Ring, namely the interpretation of Wotan’s acting and fate through Benjamin’s theory of sovereignty as well as Brünnhilde’s lament by Benjamin’s early music theory, which describes music as a dissolution of lament.

pdf of the article in: Opera after Freud.Opera quarterly, vol. 31, Nr. 1-2, Winter –Spring 2015: