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It didn’t take
long, sitting with an enthralled audience and watching the saga of the
cloistered jerk who betrayed those around him and ended up unfathomably
rich and influential, to understand why it has been hailed as a
masterpiece.

They had me at the
mesmerizing first scene, when the repulsive nerd is mocked by a comely,
slender young lady he’s trying to woo. Bitter about women, he returns
to his dark lair in a crimson fury of revenge.

It unfolds with
mythic sweep, telling the most compelling story of all, the one I cover
every day in politics: What happens when the powerless become powerful
and the powerful become powerless?

This is a drama
about quarrels over riches, social hierarchy, envy, theft and the
consequence of deceit – a world upended where the vassals suddenly
become lords and the lords suddenly lose their magic.

The beauty who
rejects the gnome at the start is furious when he turns around and
betrays her, humiliating her before the world. And the giant brothers
looming over the action justifiably feel they’ve provided the keys to
the castle and want their reward. One is more trusting than the other,
but both go berserk, feeling they’ve been swindled after entering into
a legitimate business compact.

The anti-social
nerd, surrounded by his army of slaving minions, has been holed up
making something so revolutionary and magical that it turns him into a
force that could conquer the world.

The towering
brothers battle to get what they claim is their fair share of the
glittering wealth that flows from the obsessive gnome’s genius designs.

The gnome, remarkably, invents a way to hurl yourself through space and meet up with somebody at the other end.

All of these mythic
twists and turns in “Das Rheingold” at the Metropolitan Opera in New
York were a revelation to me. I’d never seen the Ring cycle. I didn’t
even know what it was about. I loved everything about Peter Gelb’s $16
million production: the shape-shifting, high-tech stage, the mermaid
sopranos dangling from wires, the magnetic Welsh bass-baritone Bryn
Terfel, who plays Wotan, the weak ruler of the gods who tries to renege
after bartering his gorgeous sister-in-law for construction of a
gorgeous castle. (The moral of the story:

Never mess with your contractor, the contractor always wins.)

But as I watched
the opera, my mind kept flashing to the “The Social Network,” another
dazzling drama about quarrels over riches, social hierarchy, envy,
theft and the consequences of deceit. A Sony executive called “The
Social Network,” the David Fincher-Aaron Sorkin movie about Facebook’s
Mark Zuckerberg and his circle of ex-friends and partners, “the first
really modern movie.” Yet the strikingly similar themes in Wagner’s
feudal “Das Rheingold” – the Ring cycle is based on the medieval German
epic poem “Das Nibelungenlied,” which some experts say helped inspire
J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” – underscore how little human
drama changes through the ages.

We are always
fighting about social status, identity, money, power, turf, control,
lust and love. We are always trying to get even, get more and climb
higher. And we are always trying to cross the bridge to Valhalla.

W.P. Ker defined
the heroic epic as “the defense of a narrow place, against odds.” And
that can just as well sum up the modern epic of the anti-hero Mark
Zuckerberg.

In “Das Rheingold,”
the dwarf Alberich is mocked and rejected by the Rhinemaidens. “Fury
and longing/ fierce and forceful/ surge through my spirit,” Alberich
sings.

Thwarted in lust,
stewing in rage, the gnome turns to greed and vengeance. He steals the
Rhinemaidens’ gold, returns to his sulfurous, subterranean cavern and
forges a gold ring that “would give unbounded power and wealth.”

He uses the ring to
enslave the other dwarves, “the Nibelungs’ nocturnal race,” and forge
and weld more gold trinkets, as well as a magic helmet that can make
him invisible and teleport him through space.

“No one can see me/
though he search for me/ yet I am everywhere/ hidden from sight,”
Alberich says, in a perfect description of the elusive Zuckerberg and
Internet users in general.

Then, in a mantra
that could belong to Jesse Eisenberg’s Zuckerberg, Alberich warns the
gods: “Beware! / For when once you men/ serve my might/ the dwarf will
take his pleasure/ with your pretty women/ who scorn his wooing, /
though love does not smile upon him.”

The 1854 Wagner
libretto has ornate language like “the soft zephyrs’ breeze.” The 2010
Sorkin screenplay has snappy, syncopated language about Python Web
servers and Pix firewall emulators.

But the passions
that drive humans stay remarkably constant, whether it’s a magic ring
being forged or a magic code being written.

© 2010 New York Times News Service