>>3
I think we see this very clearly in "Die Walkuere", the opera to which you first referred with your remark on Wotan's "Der alte Sturm, die alte Mueh'". Obviously, there are no objective truths about which parts of Wagner are "accessible" and which aren't. But most books that I have read on Wagner recommend the First Act of "Die Walkuere" as the very best introduction to the truly great Wagner that most people don't even know about: the musician whose strength lay not in marches and great orchestral crescendos but in music of infinite delicacy and subtlety that only occasionally broke forth into beautiful flowing melodies. The First Act of "Die Walkuere", though, takes place entirely on earth, and no god makes any direct personal appearance in it. Siegmund and Sieglinde, its hero and heroine, are, admittedly, the children of Wotan. But the whole pathos of their position is that they do not know that they are. They believe that they are the children of Waelse, a mortal whom Wotan had adopted as a disguise.