Seattle Opera's Ring of Fire: Women and warriors need heroes and protection from cowards

Seattle Ring Cycle 2009/Stig Andersen as Siegfreid/Janice Baird as Brunnhilde/Photo: Rosarii Lynch

Do women still desire a hero? In Wagner’s Die Walkure, our heroine Valkyrie Brunnhilde’s worst nightmare would be to suffer a forced union, a marriage to a coward. It's more a matter of having a deserving soulmate rather than a damsel in distress needing rescue. It's for the good of the race.

Pictured above, Janice Baird as the heroine Valkyrie Brunnhilde, set to avenge the death of her husband, the hero Siegfried, sung by Stig Andersen at Seattle Opera's Ring Cycle 2009, Gotterdammerung.

Get your Valkyrie on

Speaking of Valkyries. Even during the millennium, when the world looked to the future with anticipation, I used to watch Xena Warrior Princess. Once in New Orleans a friend of mine wanted to buy me the lunchbox for sale in the French Market.

To my pilot

I then will dedicate this article to the man who accompanied me to the triumphant Ring Cycle in Seattle last week. He made it happen. He did what he said he would do months ago. Seventeen hours of Wagner and a week of me, Cindy Lu Lu. He’s 6’2 and flies his own plane. A soul and spirit capable of piloting his own life and taking me along for the ride. A credit to his gender. My 86 year old Godmother likes him. Opportunity of a lifetime, she said. Indeed.

Back to the wild and rocky mountaintop where Brunnhilde would sleep.

Even stripped of her power, her Valkyrie spirit lived. So it would still take an evil spell to force a marriage to a lesser being. Pictured below, Gordon Hawkins as Gunther, Janice Baird as Brünnhilde, Stig Andersen as Siegfried, Marie Plette as Gutrune.

Seattle Ring Cycle/Gotterdammerung/Janice Baird as Brunnhilde/Photo: Rosarii Lynch

It's an enrapturing first and only love for Brunnhilde and Siegfried, a match so pure, innocent and made in Heaven the pair never got to consummate the union sexually. (Actually I take this back after further edification from my colleague Steve Smoliar. It's only when Siegfried appears as Gunther via magic spell that Brunnhilde keeps Notung between them all night, for protection.)

Even more dramatically they would join each other in death. That's one reason the scene felt so heartbreaking, as Brunnhilde pours her heart out singing she and Siegfried never had sex. She sings Notung his sword lay between them the entire night. She's quite specific on this point and one feels her pain. Not just the longing but the fury and sense of betrayal burning hot enough to reduce Valhalla to cinders.

Janice Baird as Brunnhilde/Rosarii Lynch photo

In the end Brunnhilde would burn her father's kingdom and it's corruption to the ground in the name of vengeance and love for her Siegfried. Before Siegfried was even born, Brunnhilde's father Wotan punishes her choice of love over power, which he calls disobedience, by rendering her vulnerable. Stripped of her powers she lays as easy prey to any mortal who comes along and finds her prone on a mountaintop like a Biblical sacrifice. A predator, somebody who would prey on a powerless woman alone rather than awaken her like Sleeping Beauty.

Wotan decrees: You gaily followed the power of love: follow henceforth him whom you must love. Thank God it turned out to be the hero Siegfried, her soulmate.

Pictured below, Waltraute, a Valkyrie sister sung by Stephanie Blythe, warns and beseeches Brunnhilde. The ring is cursed and it's not just a wedding gift from your beloved, she says. Blythe gave me goosebumps as she exited the mountaintop singing of woe.

Gotterdammerung/Stephanie Blythe as Waltraute/Janice Baird as Brunnhilde/Photo: Rosarii Lynch

Sure enough, the curse plays out as does the murder plot against the hero and Brunnhilde's soulmate, Siegfried. Hagen will be the boar who gores Siegfried to death. That's Daniel Sumegi in black leather and dressed to kill.

Gotterdammerung/Seattle Opera/Daniel Sumegi as Hagen/Stig Andersen as Siegfried/Photo: Rosarii Lynch

So meanwhile on the mountaintop inferno, shame looms. It’s something out of Dante, a contrapasso where the Draconian punishment somehow mirrors the crime. Remember the lovers who get stuck together forever?

A woman needs a man of worth

So Brunnhilde begs, let no craven braggart come by; let whoso wins be a man of worth. Wotan responds, you’ve cut yourself off from me. I may not choose him for you. She answers to her father, god of Valhalla, you brought forth a valorous race; no coward could spring from such a lineage. A hero most high—I know it—will bloom from Volsungen blood. So Wotan does kiss closed the eyes of his most beloved Valkyrie and bids her farewell but encircles her mountaintop resting place with flames. He lightens her punishment by protecting her from any but a fearless hero. So ladies, save yourselves.

After investing in Seattle's Ring Cycle and a week with my beau, my inner Rhinemaiden feels restored.

Cindy Warner and beau/Seattle ferry/Photo: Cindy Warner

Coming to San Francisco

Die Walkure will come to San Francisco Opera in June of 2010. Greer Grimsley (Wotan) comes to SFO in October in Salome; Stephanie Blythe (Waltraute and Fricka) in September for Il Trovatore.

Skol.

Pictured below, Gotterdammerung, twilight of the gods. Getting their Rhinemaiden on: Jennifer Hines as Flosshilde; Julianne Gearhart as Woglinde; Michele Losier as Wellgunde.

Gotterdammerung/Rhinemaidens/Photo: Rosarii Lynch