Having heard enough of T.S.Eliot-style-nuts in the month of April, I come across the incestuous siblings, Siegmund and Sieglinde, from Wagner’s Die Walküre. Near the very end of Act I, amid the night breeze of spring, these ecstatic lovers sweep out the ominous prophecy of their tragically doomed destiny by winding up the full potency of volcanic desire for each other. Listening to the arias of Siegmund and Sieglinde, almost the most beautiful ones among Wagner’s operatic music, is just like riding a rocket. Here, spring and desire, come another way around in Wagner’s world as Sieglinde puts it:

Du bist der Lenz,
nach dem ich verlangte
in frostigen Winters Frist

You are the Spring
that Spring I have yearned for
in frost and in winter’s ice

When Kirsten Flagstad sang the mortal Sieglinde, not the heroine Brünnhilde though, she was a true goddess.