Das Rheingold (not the beer).

As I mentioned in my immediately previous post, yesterday my wife and I attended a panel discussion at the Metropolitan Opera on Wagner's Ring cycle. The panelists were: James Levine, the Met's Music Director; Otto Schenck, who is in charge of the Met's forthcoming production of Das Rheingold, the opening opera of the cycle, and two singers (whose names I failed to write and who are not on the abbreviated cast list on the Met's site) who play Rhine maidens. Levine and Schenck both stressed the importance of the maidens in setting the scene and motivating the action that gets the plot going.

The YouTube video above shows vignettes from the Royal Danish Opera's famous Ring, known as the "Copenhagen Ring", and begins with the Rhine maidens from Rheingold.

Update: Reader Martha (hmmm...who might that be?) comments that the Rhine maidens in the Copenhagen Ring are very different from those in the Met's production of Rheingold. I shall have to see.