Triumphant Sieglinde

By *Martha Duffy

The season at New York's Metropolitan Opera has been improving steadily. The height is its presentation of Wagner's four-opera masterpiece, Der Ring des Nibelungen, opera's most ambitious undertaking. All performances have been sold out, but the most clamorous demand has been for the ones in which Birgit Nilsson, the only great Wagnerian soprano today, sings Brunnhilde. Then a couple of weeks ago, people with tickets to other performances won a bonus. When Leonie Rysanek, scheduled to sing Sieglinde in Die Walkure, got sick, Met General Manager Schuyler Chapin approached Nilsson, who was free to sing the role on three nights when she was not scheduled for Brunnhilde.

Vocal Amphibian. Nilsson admits to 56 years now. She had not sung Sieglinde, the mortal woman caught in the murderous shenanigans of the gods, since 1957, simply because even the most slow-witted impresario knows that casting her as Sieglinde is like taking a great passer and putting him on defense. Nilsson is the supernatural warrior Brunnhilde.

There were unnecessary doubts that she could "go back" to Sieglinde's gentler music. Like some fabulous Ring character, Nilsson is a kind of vocal amphibian who can exist in both past and present. At times there was an eerie suggestion that one was hearing the young Nilsson. In the famous first-act duet with Siegmund (Jon Vickers), she was translucid as a lover, exalted on learning that he is also her lost twin. Nilsson never makes a meaningless gesture. She touched Siegmund almost at once--tentative, exploring--like an emotionally blinded woman. After the first act there are no more visions of a laughing house in springtime. Exhausted and pregnant,

Sieglinde is, in Nilsson's words, "a little Elektra." Accordingly, the full Nilsson sound flooded the Met.

But when Nilsson, playing a mortal, sings at top volume, what does the superhuman Brunnhilde do? Last week the unlucky lady was Berit Lindholm, a well-known Brunnhilde in Europe making her Met debut. She turned out to be a slim, handsome woman with a thrilling mezzo register, but this did not help her with much of Brunnhilde's important music. Vickers sang Siegmund with wrenching intensity, which worked fine with Nilsson. But in the searing confrontation with Brunnhilde he was dramatically undermatched.

A good deal more excitement went, too, at the hands of the designers. These days no one really expects Fricka to ride on in a chariot drawn by rams, but why sacrifice the whole idea of the Valkyries as warriors? Shields and spears are banished from this Valhalla (directed by Wolfgang Weber and designed by Giinther Schneider-Siemssen). Maybe the old helmets were corny, but they were no worse than the dated bouffant coiffes the maidens now wear, not to speak of the evening gowns, complete with sequins and bugle beads. The nine mighty young immortals lack only evening purses to pass for the gaudier members of the audience.

The 4 1/2-hour evening fell short on drama, but one of the great moments was played triumphantly. It occurs when Brunnhilde tells Sieglinde that her child will be Siegfried, the greatest hero of all. Sieglinde replies in long, high, exulting phrases--heroic music almost always rendered shaky or inaudible by light-voiced sopranos. But Nilsson's O hehrstes Wunder! rang out as a triumph over both mortality and the gods. Those who hear Nilsson sing it will not forget it, and quite possibly never hear it sung rightagain.

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