Wagner, Droysen and the Greek Satyr-Play

The view is commonly expressed that Richard Wagner’s Ring des Nibelungen takes as its model the structure of an Athenian tragic tetralogy, but modified in such a way that the equivalent to the Greek satyr-play, Das Rheingold, comes first in the sequence.1 This view has never been subjected to scrutiny, nor have critics made adequate use of Wagner’s source of information regarding the ancient satyr-play. There can be no doubt that Wagner was heavily, even decisively, influenced by Attic drama, especially by the works of Aeschylus.2 The composer’s familiarity with the work of the fifth-century dramatist depended primarily upon the German translation (1832) by Johann Gustav Droysen.3 Droysen’s translation includes extensive «Didaskalien», in which he discusses the historical and intellectual background of Aeschylean drama.4 The translation also features an attempt to reconstruct some of the tetralogies that Aeschylus is known, or is thought, to have composed, and these reconstructions include, in a few instances, the satyr-play that is supposed to have accompanied the tragedies. In his brief treatment of Amymone, the satyr-play of the Danaid tetralogy, Droysen quotes a saying of Ion of Chios to the effect that virtue, like a tragic performance, ought to have a satyric component «als ein nothwendiges Ingredienz».5 Wagner seems to have appreciated the significance of the satyric, since he owned a watercolor by Buonaventura Genelli, «Dionysos, von den Musen Apollos erzogen», of which the lefthand third is dominated by a group including a naked, grotesquely dancing satyr.6 Significantly, in a fragmentary piece published from his Nachlaß after his death, entitled «Das Genie der Gemeinsamkeit», Wagner says, «der Tragödie mußte aber stets zum Beschluß das Satyrspiel folgen (notwendiges Zugeständnis!)».7 Although Wagner himself refers to the Ring as a tetralogy, both in his Zukunftsmusik and his Lebensbericht IV,8 he never, as far as I am aware, speaks of a satyr-play in connection