Steven Schwartz wrote:

>...  To me, the Ring is the great 19th-century drama and capable of
>supporting many interpretations.  For one involved interpretation, see
>Shaw's Perfect Wagnerite.  I actually think the use of incest - dangerous
>material, I grant you - brilliant, since it is not used for titillation or
>pornography and it makes vivid the world of the sagas.  "Juvenile" is the
last adjective I'd apply to the Ring.  A juvenile work, it seems to me,
>would end either in triumphant heroism or unalloyed bathos, and the Ring
>ends ambiguously.  The Ring is full of adult choices.  I think of Wotan
>especially - the god who acts knowing he can't really change the outcome.
>What's so juvenile about that?

To my mind, this was concentrated in one gesture, not really musical except
for its context, in the notorious Goetz Friedrich (Subway Station) Ring
that I attended in Washington about ten years ago.  It comes right after
Fricka has changed Wotan's mind about the outcome of the ensuing duel
between Siegmund and Hunding.

Up till then, things habe been going Wotan's way better than they ever had
since he had to give up the ring to Fafner to ransom the goddess Freia.
(The extent to which Wagner's gods fall short of omnipotence is the real
theme of the tale.) He's gotten his twin children, Siegmund and Sieglinde
to fall in love, consummate their love and eventually bring forth the hero
qualified to recapture the all-important ring.  This was not as easy as it
might appear.  Freud to the contrary notwithstanding, twin siblings will
not normally be incestuously attracted to each other.  Only by having
Sieglinde kidnapped and forced into an oppressive marriage from which a
tired and wounded Siegmund rescues her can the relationship that starts
as mutual compassion between two apparent strangers transform itself into
an erotic love that survives the parties' realization that it is in fact
incestuous.  At least it worked for Wotan.  It's all set now, Siegfriend
will kill Hunding, who's a no good jerk anyway, and just to make sure, he
instructs his daughter Brunhilda, a Valkyrie, to protect him.

Who comes in to upset the apple cart, but Wotan's wife, Fricka.  She's his
wife, but he's the king of the gods who incidentally has sired a number
of children by mothers other than her.  She nevertheless undertakes to
dissuade him from a plan that has such a shaky moral foundation.  Of course
she's right.  Siegmund and Sieglinde's love is twice taboo; Sieglinde is
married to Hunding and she is Siegmund's sister.  And to compound this
double desecration, Wotan proposes to permit Siegmund to kill Hunding in
the ensuing duel!  But isn't this a case where the rules as we've learned
them simply cease to apply? Hunding is a feelingless brute, willing, it is
true to let Siegmund spend the night under his roof, but promising to fight
him the next morning even though Siegmund has no weapon.  (Hunding couldn't
know that Siegmund would obtain one in the interval.) Both Siegmund and
Sieglinde have never known a happy hour until they were reunited.  Far from
brutalizing women, Siegmund defends them, often alone against a gang of
attackers.  Fricka remains unimpressed.  The accepted institutions cannot
be flouted the way Wotan intends.  The argument continues at Wagnerian
length...and Wotan caves in!

And here came that remarkable gesture that I mentioned above.  She's won
her case against the king of the gods, one who himself has not shied from
straying from his marriage bed.  And she steps back, closes her eyes and
raises her head, almost as if disbelieving her accomplishment, then brings
her head down again as she walks off the stage.

Walter Meyer