That was the Canadian Wagner expert, Iain Scott's comment about Wagner's
*Die Walkuere* at the lecture he gave before the Virginia Opera Company's
presentation of the work last Sunday afternoon.  But of course he was
facetious.

I attended the second of two local performances last Sunday afternoon
by the Virginia Opera at the George Mason University Center for the Arts.
The cast included Thomas Rolf Truhitte, of the (DC) Wagner Society's
Evelyn Lear and Thomas Stewart Emerging Singers Program, as Siegmund,
Jeannine Altmeyer as Sieglinde, Susan Marie Pierson as Bruenhilde, Marc
Embree as Wotan, Tracie Luck as Fricka, and Charles Robert Austin as
Hunding.  Meaning no slight, I'll omit the names of the remaining
Valkyries; their impression was a collective one w/ no individual
standing out so far as I could tell.

Before the start of the opera, viewers had the choice between two lectures.
I chose the one under the auspices of the Wagner Society of Washington,
DC (through which, although not a member, I had obtained my opera ticket),
which was given by Iain Scott, who was introduced by another Wagner
authority, Father Owen Lee.

Scott was admiringly compared to Hans Sachs (Iain=John=Hans, while
Scott could easily be considered a variant on Sachs) and Scott, himself
considered himself honored to be there with Fr.  Lee as well as the
singers Thomas Stewart and Evelyn Lear, who were also present in the
audience.  He told us how his first attendance had gotten off to a bad
start.  He knew no German and had not read up on the opera.  The first
act seemed slow, all talk w/ no action until towards the end.  The second
act seemed more of the same and at a point (actually Wotan's narration
to Bruenhilde), where the orchestra w/ great effect diminishes until
only the bass is heard, he had fallen asleep.

Actually, Scott would recommend *Lohengrin* as the best first Wagner
opera, followed, his own initial experience notwithstanding, by Act I
of *Die Walkuere*, which can be considered an opera in itself, or that
opera's end of Act III.

He reminded us that we get so worked up in the erotically charged love
story that we overlook, if we don't actually forget, that this is a
sordid tale of adultery and incest.  By the end of the act, the couple
is so overwhelmed by the intensity of their mutual attraction that Wagner
had to indicate in his stage directions for the curtain to fall quickly
in the interest of decency.  While this was "only" my fourth live
*Walkuere* (I say "only" because the people all around me seemed on at
least their tenth attendance and Scott himself couldn't recall whether
he'd been to twenty or thirty performances.), I have several recordings
and the one I remember best is the Boehm recording w/ Leonie Rysanek
singing Sieglinde.  As a slight philological digression for the few here
who might need it, the English word "vagina" is also the Latin word for
"sheath".  The German word for "sheath" (Scheide) means both "sheath"
and "vagina".  In the Boehm recording, when Siegmund extracts the sword
from the ash tree singing "heraus aus der Scheide zu mir!" Rysanek, as
Sieglinde lets out an erotic, orgasmic shriek, probably enough to arouse
most listeners' prurient interests.  Ms Altmeyer managed to restrain
herself.  I found this so surprising, especially in view of the scene
of Siegmund and Sieglinde wrestling on the floor a few moments later
before the curtain had a chance to fall rapidly, that I checked out some
of my other recordings.  It turns out that Regine Crespine in the famous
Solti recording also demurely withheld any scream.  I then turned to my
benchmark recording, the Walter, Melchior, Lehmann, List performance
which for me demonstrates the difference between a superlative and a
merely excellent performance.  The Walter performance has a drive, an
inevitability, making each musical moment an outgrowth of its predecessor;
the listener is as on a constant roller coaster.  And Lotte Lehmann
doesn't scream.  I have some other recordings of that act but I didn't
bother checking them out.  The Boehm touch was, as far as I was concerned,
a great one, but I can't fault the Virginia Opera for leaving it out.

The First Act of *Die Walkuere* is the first occasion in the Ring cycle
depicting the activity of ordinary humans.  In the Second Act, we're
back to the gods.  Twenty years or so have passed since the end of
*Rheingold*.  As Wotan explains in successive conversations w/ Bruenhilde,
the gods' security in the Valhalla they had the giants construct for
them in the earlier opera is in serious jeopardy unless and until the
Rheingold itself, now shaped into a ring carrying a curse, is returned
to the river from which it was wrested.  Since Wotan had given the ring
in partial payment for the building of Valhalla he is now foreclosed by
the ironclad law of contracts from reclaiming it.  But if his sturdy son
Siegmund, who is unaware of his ancestry or of his intended mission
should recapture the ring w/out assistance from Wotan, the latter would
not be in breach of his agreement.  Actually, the gods are not in immediate
danger because the ring is guarded by the surviving giant, now turned
into a dragon, who's apparently too stupid to do much w/ the ring other
than hoard it.  However Alberich, from whom Wotan had originally stolen
the ring has now sired a son who may recapture the ring if Wotan's
surrogate doesn't do so first.  Back now to the opera itself.

The Virginia Opera made much of the playfulness of the Valkyries.
A bunch of them are shown brandishing their spears like something out
of a mediocre martial arts movie.  After the others leave, Bruenhilde
repeatedly pokes at Wotan (her father) with her spear which he good-naturedly
deflects.  It's almost like a doting daddy playing w/ his ten-year old
mischievous daughter.  No sooner has Wotan instructed Bruenhilde to
protect Siegmund in his impending duel w/ Hunding, Sieglinde's avenging
husband, than he is confronted with his wife, Fricka, and Bruenhilde,
sensing a marital spat, exits.  There follows a debate over whether
sincere and intense love between a woman in a loveless forced marriage
and another man, who also happens to be her twin brother, can triumph
over the conventional dictates of the laws and obligations of marriage
and family, Wotan arguing the affirmative, to which Fricka snorts something
like "Easy for you to say, siring nine daughters [the Valkyries] by Erda,
the earth goddess, and two more twins by a mortal woman." She wins the
argument.  Just as Wotan cannot extricate himself from the contractual
obligations binding him to the giants, so is he unable to flout the
established laws of marital and family obligations.  Siegmund, his
darling, who was to ensure the gods' survival by recapturing the ring,
must die, sacrificed on the altar of family law.  Scott told us that in
a movie version of the Chereau production, Wotan at this point looks in
a mirror as a pendulum swings.  Maybe the gods had access to amenities
denied to mortals at that time but poor Sieglinde has only her reflection
in a brook to suggest to her how similar she looks to Siegmund.  (But
then, wasn't the Chereau production the one where Wotan wandered about
in modern dress dragging a spear with him?) I remember this moment in
the Goetz Friedrich Berlin Opera production of the Ring at the Kennedy
Center in 1989, where Fricka, sung by Hanna Schwarz, not quite believing
her success in this argument, turns to walk away and, when she's sure
Wotan can no longer see her, suddenly exhales and nods her head, accustoming
herself to the unexpected victory.

Scott (and the program notes) suggested that the Siegmund/Sieglinde story
reflected Wagner's own relationship w/ his wife Minna and w/ Mathilde
Wesendonck whose poems he set to music and whose husband was a patron
of his.  Not that it matters much, but, although not a Wagner scholar,
I find this doubtful.  From all I hear, his relationship w/ Mathilde was
never consummated, much like Tristan's w/ Isolde, the thwarted lovers
in the opera that I believe was inspired by the Wagner/Wesendonck
relationship.

The news of the change in plans is hard enough to break to Bruenhilde
when she returns, but even harder for Bruenhilde to explain to Siegmund
who, upon learning that, even after death, he'll not see Sieglinde again
in Valhalla, declares, he'll have none of the blessed afterlife w/out
his love and will rather kill her and himself, at which the moved
Bruenhilde switches sides in defiance of orders, unfortunately to no
avail.  Wotan suddenly appears, shatters Siegmund's sword w/ his spear
(thereby probably breaking at least an implied agreement w/ his son)
permitting Siegmund to be killed, after which, w/ what the stage directions
call a gesture of contempt, he causes Hunding to fall dead as well.

Bruenhilde's dreadful punishment (she's to become a housewife!) is the
subject of the third act.  It opened on Sunday w/ a spectacle of the
eight other Valkyries assembling to the music popularized in *Apocalypse
Now*.  No horses were shown, but the gals, or their stand-ins, did fly
through the air on what must have been high wires.  Sieglinde has perhaps
the most magnificent passage which, although a recognized Leitmotiv,
does not reoccur until the end of *Goetterdaemmerung*, the motive of
redemption through love ("O heerstes Wunder!", Oh, mightiest of miracles!).
She sings it as she learns that she is to bear Siegmund's son, Siegfried,
and that the fragments of the sword shattered by Wotan's spear will be
forged into a new weapon.

Wotan is now drawn into another debate, this one with his favorite
but cast out daughter.  She argues that, rather than disobeying Wotan's
orders, as his alter ego, she was simply carrying out his wishes, which
he was compelled to mask with contrary instructions.  Wotan isn't buying
it.  Much as he may have once wanted the contrary, and difficult as it
may have been to abandon those desires, what he now wanted was what he
instructed Bruenhilde and it was treasonous insubordination for her to
disobey.  For this, some of us might just have taken the car keys from
her and grounded her for a month but punishments were more Draconian in
those days.  She's to lose her immortality, fall asleep on a rock and
be the wife of the first man to find and wake her.  As a single concession
he'll surround her, to the tune of the Magic Fire Music, w/ forbidding
flames which none but a truly fearless hero will ever dare to penetrate.
As in the case of the dying Siegmund, Wotan clasps his child in a last
paternal embrace and then says his farewell.

I enjoyed the performance, whether I was expected to or not.  The curtain
calls were exhilarating, the Valkyries coming in from up in the air, one
even doing a somersault in mid-air.  I was most impressed by Susan Marie
Pierson as Bruenhilde.  She was equally convincing as the playful teen-aged
papa's darling at the beginning and as the serious harbinger of death
to Siegmund, further on, and as the pleader of her cause to Wotan at the
end.  Ms. Altmeyer, who sang Sieglinde in the Friedrich production I
attended in 1989, was sometimes drowned out by the orchestra.

So what was Wotan's plan?  Did he originally expect a surviving Siegmund
to reclaim the ring for him?  In that case, why lead him to the house
were Sieglinde was held as a captive wife, where he would sire a son by
her?  If he knew that there was going to be a son, and how, as a god,
could he not know when even Bruenhilde knew, why go through the charade
of first wanting him to survive the duel w/ Hunding when all the laws
and conventions by which Wotan felt himself bound required the opposite
result?  Did it really take Fricka to convince him or was he just relying
upon her to provide a pretext for him to do what he knew he would need
to do?  (Can you imagine Siegmund and Sieglinde raising little Siegfried
in their forest love nest?  W/ all the time spent on school and little
league and basket ball, none of them would ever get around to reclaiming
that ring!) But, when all these questions are answered, if only to accept
that we can't really be sure what the answers are, why was it necessary
for Siegfried to find wake and woo Bruenhilde (only to deceive her
unwittingly) as happens in the next two operas?  Perhaps the story is
by its nature confused and confusing and Wagner, like Anna Russell wasn't
really making this up!

Walter Meyer