I ran out of paper, so she get's a short-spear.
A couple weeks ago I watched the performance from the Met of Richard Wagner's The Ring of the Nibelung, or some of it anyway. It's very long, and some nights went to one in the morning. I got to see some of the cool parts, like when Siegmund told Brünnhilde (paraphrasing), "I'd rather go to Hell in a hand-basket, than to Valhalla in a saddlebag!" They had this amazing state of the art set with large rotating panels. You can see it in the trailer. They made all sorts of backgrounds with it by rotating them and projecting images onto the surface.
When reading the story (click on the four opera names), I wondered how much it influenced Tolkien when writing Lord of the Rings? Also if you haven't seen Arthur Rackam's illustrations of the Ring Cycle, check it out! Some of them are on the Wikipedia page.
