DownWithTyranny!: Sunday Classics flashback/preview, part 1: We haven't quite finished with this lovely soprano

Alberich and the Rhinemaidens in the opening scene of Wagner's Das Rheingold

SCENE: At the bottom of the Rhine
[English translation by Andrew Porter]

Greenish half-light, turning brighter towards the top, darker below. The scene is filled with whirling waters that flow ceaselessly from right to left. Towards the bottom the tide is dispelled into an increasingly fine damp mist, so that a space as high as a man from the ground seems to be completely free of the water which flows, as if in cloud formation, over the dusky bed. Sheer rockfaces rise everywhere from the depths and mark the confines of the stage. The whole river bed is broken up into a mass of jagged rocks and is nowhere completely flat as a result; deep gorges are to be imagined in the dense darkness all around.

In the centre of the stage, round one rock, whose slender apex stretches up into the brighter area of densely swirling water, one of the Rhinemaidens is circling with graceful swimming strokes.

WOGLINDE: Weia! Waga!
Wandering waters,
lulling our cradle!
Wagala weia!
Wallala, weiala weia!
WELLGUNDE [singing from higher up]: Woglinde, watching alone?
WOGLINDE: Till Wellgunde joins me down here.
WELLGUNDE [dives down from the waters onto the rock] Let's see how you watch!
WOGLINDE: Safe from your grasp!
[They tease and try to catch one another.]
FLOSSHILDE: Heiala weia!
Careful my sisters!
WELLGUNDE: Flosshilde, swim!
Woglinde flies!
Hurry and help me
to catch her!
FLOSSHILDE: The sleeping gold
calls for your care!
Back to your task of guarding its bed
or else you'll pay
for your games!
[With cheerful cries the other two swim apart: Flosshilde tries to catch first one, then the other; they evade her and finally combine in joint pursuit of Flosshilde; in this way they dart like fishes from rock to rock, joking and laughing.]

by Ken

My original intention was to start the above audio clip at the track 2, the first bit of singing, to introduce, or reintroduce, a singer we've heard recently but haven't given a fair reckoning. Gradually, though, I realized that you can't just skip over the actual opening of Das Rheingold (or The Rhinegold, as it's presented to us here). So if you want to just hear the soprano I don't feel we've done proper justice, you can just click ahead to the second track -- and skip over one of the most prodigious feats of musical imagination to have sprung from the mind of man. Your choice.

One of these days we're going to come back to this scene, and hear the likes of Joan Sutherland and Erna Berger as the "lead" Rhinemaiden, Woglinde -- oh yes, it's the Woglinde of this performance we're interested in. My point here is that it is, yes, in a sense a "small" role, but the Rhinemaidens actually do a fair amount of singing, and if it isn't done well, that can go a long way toward killing a performance of the Ring cycle before it's had a chance to get started.

With regard to our "mystery" Woglinde, in the unlikely event that you haven't already figured out who she is, here's a selection that's a bit closer to home, at least as we've known her so far. The thing is, it's so close to home that for the benefit of those of you who are playing along, I can't identify it till the click-through.

My kindly friends, I thank you for this greeting
And as you wish me every earthly joy,
I trust your wishes may have quick fulfillment!

Oh, happy young heart!
Comes thy young lord a-wooing
With joy in his eyes,
And pride in his breast --
Make much of thy prize,
For he is the best
That ever came a-suing.
Yet -- yet we must part,
Young heart!
Yet -- yet we must part!

Oh, merry young heart,
Bright are the days of thy wooing!
But happier far
The days untried --
No sorrow can mar,
When love has tied
The knot there's no undoing.
Then, never to part,
Young heart!
Then, never to part!