By Kate Connolly [The Guardian, 23 August 2010]
Wotan, father of the gods, has just kissed his daughter, Br¸nnhilde, to sleep and left her to burn alive. Katharina Wagner raises her eyebrows as she smacks her lips around an ice-cream, and looks on in satisfaction at the sea of 20,000 people who have gathered on Bayreuth’s carnival ground to watch a live transmission of The Valkyrie on a huge screen. “I think we’ve pulled it off,” she says.