Beginning in 1974, American contralto Geraldine Decker sang every Seattle Opera RING performance, as Erda, Schwertleite, and the First Norn, through 1987. Her many other roles for Seattle included a number of other maternal figures: Azucena (“Il trovatore”), Albine (“Thaïs”), Filipyevna (“Eugene Onegin”), Quickly (“Falstaff”), Innkeeper & Nurse (“Boris Godunov”), Marthe Schwerlein (“Faust”), Klytämnestra (“Elektra”), Herodias (“Salome”), Grandmother Burja (“Jenůfa”), Mama McCourt (“The Ballad of Baby Doe”), and Mother Jeanne (“Dialogues of the Carmelites”). Here, from a recording made in 1986, Manuel Rosenthal conducts Decker and the orchestra of Seattle Opera in Erda's deus ex machina appearance in Das Rheingold.