ehudgins@atlassociety.org April 11, 2007 -- I love opera! Thus recently at the Kennedy Center I saw Die Walküre, the second installment of Richard Wagner's monumental four-part cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen, about gods and goddesses, giants and dwarfs, and mortal human heroes. The music, singing and acting were superb. But the program notes seemed like Al Gore channeling Karl Marx. Consider "dramaturg" Cori Ellison's description (bold in the original) of the opera's themes. First, nature: "The despoiling of nature through greed and ambition begins even before the stage action does, with Wotan sacrificing his own eye to drink from the...