Word: wotan
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...character. It is not the specific question of his allegiance which seems to oppress him--he is simply burdened by a gloom which envelopes all the characters. The tone of continual tension denies his greatest dramatic acts any major significance: his curse, for instance, simply cries out for a Wotan-like declamation, yet neither the libretto nor the music provides anything of the kind...
Somehow, the opera got started on time. But in Act II, just when Baritone Otto Edelmann seemed to be booming along comfortably in the role of Wotan, his voice began to fail. Edelmann withdrew at the end of Act II. He was replaced by Baritone Randolph Symonette, who lasted on stage for only four minutes. "It seemed to me like four hours," said shaken Conductor Erich Leinsdorf, later...
Conductor Leinsdorf started again after a jump of ten pages in the score to cut out some of the more tortuous vocal passages, and Baritone Edelmann came on again as Wotan, in brighter voice after his rest. Happily, they all made it to the final curtain. "I felt like the pilot who decides on a crash landing," said Leinsdorf. "We made it without the plane going up in flames...
Despite its needlessly bloodthirsty climax-the machinist, like Wotan, gives up an eye to gain his triumph-The Angry Silence is a grimly impressive critique of the mass mind. Guy Green's direction is sure, direct, forceful. Bryan Forbes's script is swift, cogent, vernacular. But Hero Attenborough's performance is the best thing in the picture. He is so ordinary it hurts, but then his ordinariness is an essential part of his significance. Anybody, he seems to say, anybody at all can stand up on his hind legs and live his own life if only...
...hands on the spot where his daughter died. "I know no other way to be reconciled with my own hands. I know no other way to live." At that instant, a spring gushes out of the ground beneath the daughter's head. The father-and the Wotan-worshiping sister-fall on their knees to receive the miraculous water of life...