>>10
The contrast between the "world of mortals" and "the world of the gods" as we pass from the First Act to the Second is extremely striking. Musically, there is certainly very little in the long - I think, fifteen- or twenty-minute - debate between Wotan and Fricka that makes up most of Act Two to compare to Act One's "Wintersonne wiche dem Wonnemonde" or the orgasmic Act One finale. More importantly, though, it is the QUALITY of what is said through the music and the Sprechgesang that is very different here.
I suppose it's necessary at this point to qualify and to make more nuanced, after all, my original statement about the "scenes among the gods" being more "boring" than the "scenes among mortals". Whether the long, immensely wordy Fricka-Wotan scene is "boring" or not depends, I suppose, on what you are actually LOOKING FOR from a scene in an opera. I have always LOVED the FIRST scene of "The Valkyrie" with a passion. But in the period when I was trying to write a book about the philosophy and the theology of "The Ring" - I gave it up eventually - it was the SECOND act (an affair between gods almost exclusively) that I found myself poring over and poring over, finding absolutely essential and precise meaning in every word.