Wild Women: Opera gives its right eye (or left, depending)

Chapter 3 has me thinking about the inspirational opera star.  Searching for her on Google has rendered little results.  One hit I got was Katharine Cornell, an opera star who once wore a patch, on Opera News.  She wore the patch for her role in That Lady. 

I take issue with a reviewer of That Lady who wrote that the patch was "unable to obscure her radiance," John Mason Brown The Saturday Review Nov 22, 1949.  Was it supposed to?  Could just a patch do that?  Look at that beautiful, elegant woman.  I would argue the patch adds to her beauty, but then of course I'm  biased and have the benefit of sixty years of tolerance.

Turns out there are a lot of eye patches in opera, only it seems more frequent for men.  Take the role of Wotan in Wagner's The Ring of the Nibelung series, or Odin from Norse mythology. 

Wagner's Wotan found on Intermezzo.

Some Wagner to set the mood.

 

Hopkins as a one-eyed Odin in next summer's Thor.

I did find some interesting information on the "Opera Whiz" blog as I was researching (okay, Googling) why Wotan as the Wanderer has lost his eye:

Brünnhilde herself is the original warrior maiden. In Norse lore, the valkyries were the daughters of Wotan and Erda, the earth goddess. "I'd give my right eye for a one night in the sack," was the line he used on her. (That's why he wears an eye patch in the operas.) It was the valkyries' job to fly down from Valhalla. They would swoop over the battlefield and collect the bodies of the most valiant warriors and take them back to Valhalla, where they would live in celebrated eternity.

Of course Intermezzo makes the point that Wanderer's missing eye seems to wander itself...(see Eye Eye Wotan post)

Last related point for this post: guess what the Valkyries fly down as...SWANS!!!  That's why they have wings and NOT horns.  Read Beth Parker's entire Opera Whiz post  Hey Wagner, thanks for Xena and She-Ra post here.

Remember: swan wings not horns ladies!

We'll save "Soap" operas for another day...