Rein Gold / Pure Gold

Starting with the famous dialogue between Wotan, father of Gods and his favourite daughter Brünnhilde from the third act of Walküre, Jelinek re-examines the events in Wagner’s Ring cycle and extends them into the present day. The crucial and pivoting point always remains the meaning of gold and money, to which everything tends and which push forward all action and thought. This complete power reaches from the battle for the hoard of the Nibelungs to Karl Marx’ theses for his book Das Kapital, which was created almost simultaneously to Wagner’s Ring, up till the present-day financial crisis. In a stream of wildly ramified associations, all the while staying closely connected to Wagner's original text, Jelinek touches upon current political phenomena, like the brutal murders committed by a Nazi terror cell in Zwickau, she ties in surprising references and connections, and still always returns to her leitmotiv: how capitalism was born from a deluded spirit of salvation.