Finale

The waters of the Rhine closed over the fateful Ring; swaggering Siegfried, murdered, burned on a giant pyre, Bruennhilde with him; Walhalla flamed red in the sky and, greed punished, the curtain at the Metropolitan Opera House, Manhattan, fell last week on the first performance of the season of Richard Wagner's Gotterdammerung, stupendous finale of the Nibelungen Ring, fifth of the Wagner matinees. Nanny Larsen-Todsen, recovering from an illness, sang the difficlut music of Bruennhilde, creditably. Michael Bohmen, big bass also billed as "indisposed," was sinister, impressive, magnificent; Friedrich Schorr, superb as Gunther; Rudolph Laubenthal, bountifully bewigged, an uninspired Siegfried. Critics reveled in the music, lauded its interpreter, Conductor Artur Bodansky; bewailed the fact that carelessness and a disregard for Wagner's instructions were allowed to spoil many of the effects; prayed that the Metropolitan orchestra, for several weeks now noticeably ragged, would get a long profitable vacation.