Aaron Rabushka wrote: >When I think of evil men in opera it's hard not to start with the Ring >Cycle: Alberich Actually, except for his abuse of the Nibelungen while he possessed the Ring, Alberich may be the most honorable of the major male characters in the Ring cycle. He came by the ring fair and square, after renouncing love in response to the Rhine Maiden's taunts. When it is taken from him by treachery he places a curse upon all of its subsequent possessors, none of whom have a right to it. As for the other characters: Wotan tries to get out of an improvident bargain with the giants, condones adultery and incest in Siegmund and then turns upon him anyway; Siegmund runs off with and impregnates another man's (admittedly unhappy) wife after learning that she's his sister; Mime lives hoping to kill his ward, Siegfried, as soon as the latter should secure the ring; 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; Hagen is an evil schemer and literally a back stabber; Gunter, a wimp. 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. The Rhine Maidens are a bunch of bitches, 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.... Walter Meyer