e understood now why
Thea wished him to hear her in "Rheingold." It had been clear to him as
soon as FRICKA rose from sleep and looked out over the young world,
stretching one white arm toward the new Gotterburg shining on the
heights. "WOTAN! GEMAHL! ERWACHE!" She was pure Scandinavian, this
FRICKA: "Swedish summer"! he remembered old Mr. Nathanmeyer's phrase.
She had wished him to see her because she had a distinct kind of
loveliness for this part, a shining beauty like the light of sunset on
distant sails. She seemed to take on the look of immortal loveliness,
the youth of the golden apples, the shining body and the shining mind.
FRICKA had been a jealous spouse to him for so long that he had forgot
she meant wisdom before she meant domestic order, and that, in any
event, she was always a goddess. The FRICKA of that afternoon was so
clear and sunny, so nobly conceived, that she made a whole atmosphere
about herself and quite redeemed from shabbiness the helplessness and
unscrupulousness of the gods. Her reproaches to WOTAN were the pleadings
of a tempered mind, a consistent sense of beauty. In the long silences
of her part, her shining presence was a visible complement to the
discussion of the orchestra. As the themes which were to help in weaving
the drama to its end first came vaguely upon the ear, one saw their
import and tendency in the face of this clearest-visioned of the gods.

In the scene between FRICKA and WOTAN, Ottenburg stopped. "I can't seem
to get the voices, in there."

Landry chuckled. "Don't try. I know it well enough. I expect I've been
over that with her a thousand times. I was playing for her almost every
day when she was first working on it. When she begins with a part she's
hard to work with: so slow you'd think she was stupid if you didn't know
her. Of course she blames it all on her accompanist. It goes on like
that for weeks sometimes. This did. She kept shaking her head and
staring and looking gloomy. All at once, she got her line--it usually
comes suddenly, after stretches of not getting anywhere at all--and
after that it kept changing and clearing. As she worked her voice into
it, it got more and more of that 'gold' quality that makes her FRICKA so
different."

Fred began FRICKA'S first aria again. "It's certainly different. Curious
how she does it. Such a beautiful idea, out of a part that's always been
so ungrateful. She's a lovely thing, but she was never so beautiful as
that, reall