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In her slow and solemn sleep-weighted tones, she tells him that the Norns spin into their coil the visions of her illuminated sleep. Why does he not consult them? Or why, she asks, when that counsel is rejected, why does he not, still mote aptly, consult Brünnhilde, wise child of Wotan and Erda?
In all his wandering over the earth, in search of wisdom and counsel, none has Wotan found so wise as she. The question he proposes is: How may a rolling wheel be arrested in its course? Erda is not willingly waked out of her sleep, nor is it her wont to communicate directly with the upper world.
The strands of the coil become tangled between their fingers. One of them descries an angry face Alberich's floating before her; another becomes aware of an avenging curse gnawing at the threads of the coil. This suddenly snaps terrific omen! Appalled, with the cry that "eternal wisdom is at an end," they vanish in search of their mother, Erda, in the earth's depths. Day breaks.
Most magnificent is the descending chromatic passage that accompanies Ortrud as she casts her spell again over Frederick. It resembles closely an Erda theme of the Ring as is quite natural, for one chromatic scale cannot but resemble another.
The colours of the scenery are likewise as intolerably German as ever the greens coarse and rank, the yellows bilious, the blues tinged with a sickly green, the reds as violent as the dress of the average German frau. On the other hand, many of the effects are wonderful the mountain gorge where Wotan calls up Erda, Mime's cave, the depths of the Rhine, the burning of the hall of the Gibichungs.
Erda, who warned him of the power of the curse, now proven before his eyes, warned him likewise of worse things, of old order changing, a dark day dawning for the gods. He must seek Erda, learn more, have counsel what to do.
The hour is at hand when the spear must offer itself to be braved by this incarnate courage bent upon that same adventure, when Wotan must take the chances of discovering that this boy is freer than he the god. He had declared himself but a moment ago, in his communication with Erda, willing to yield his supremacy to the Eternally Young One.
While Wotan takes the power, his deepest wisdom, which is to say, his intuition represented by the spirit of the earth, Erda rises against him and tells him he is committing the fatal mistake, and he yields to the extent of letting the giants have the supreme power.
And so he dismisses Erda to her sleep in the heart of the earth as the forest bird draws near, piloting the slain son's son to his goal. Now it is an excellent thing to triumph in the victory of the new order and the passing away of the old; but if you happen to be part of the old order yourself, you must none the less fight for your life.
Lilly Lehmann. Marie Lehmann. Lammert. SIEGMUND Herr NIEMANN. HUNDING Herr NIERING. WOTAN Herr BETZ. SIEGLINDE Frl. SCHEFZKY. BRÜNNHILDE Frau FRIEDRICH-MATERNA. FRICKA Frau VON GRÜN-SADLER. SIEGFRIED Herr UNGER. MIME Herr SCHLOSSER. DER WANDERER Herr BETZ. ALBERICH Herr HILL. FAFNER Herr VON REICHENBERG. ERDA Frau JÄIDA. BRÜNNHILDE Frau FRIEDRICH-MATERNA
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