Walter Meyer in responce to my comments on the men of the Ring cycle:

>Actually, except for his abuse of the Nibelungen while he possessed the
>Ring,

That's a big "except."

>Alberich may be the most honorable of the major male characters in
>the Ring cycle.

Damnation by faint praise if ever I heard it.  If there's one man in the
Ring who seems to get the short end of the stick through no fault of his
own I would say it's Fasolt.

>He came by the ring fair and square, after renouncing love in response to
>the Rhine Maiden's taunts.
>
>Siegfried, unaware of this, is distressingly unappreciative and ungrateful
>to Mime for having raised him from infancy when his mother died in
>childbirth and kills a dragon for no reason other than that it hadn't
>taught him to fear;

I would say that Siegfried has the same contempt for Mime that the audience
does.  After killing his (=Fafner's) brother the dragon had it coming.
Perhaps Siegfried's victims suffer the right punishments for the wrong
reasons.

>Hagen is an evil schemer and literally a back stabber;

Agreed.

>Gunter, a wimp.

A pawn, definitely.  Wimp I'm not so sure.  And even if, in the final
analysis, he is, there are worse things a man can be (and the Ring shows
examples of many of them).

>Now, among the females, Erda, worldly wise, Brunhilde, more sinned against
>than sinning, and Gutrune, who doesn't seem to have a clue, could be
>considered honorable.

Perhaps that is why the women have the most fetching redemption music.

>The Rhine Maidens are a bunch of bitches,

Most probably would not have been so had Alberich left them alone.

>...but for whose taunting of Alberich we might have been spared the rest
>of the cycle (maybe that's what redeems them!); Sieglinde should probably
>have exercised more self-restraint; Fricka is a self-righteous biddy....

No argument on either of those two.  I've always thought it very telling
that Fricka sings for 10-15 minutes in "Die Walkuere" yet controls the
action for the remaining 2 1/2 evenings.  All very different from
Papageno's flunking the test and still getting the girl!

Aaron J. Rabushka
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