Return to Index

Act 1

Scene 1

The opera opens as a raging storm (with thunder and lightning) is beginning to subside. As the curtain goes up we are in Hunding's house in the forest. The room is unusual because a large tree is growing there. Siegmund enters in search of shelter. He falls on the hearth, exhausted, where he is discovered by Sieglinde, Hunding's unhappy wife. Siegmund tells her that he is fleeing from enemies. She tells him Hunding is not at home, but offers him refreshment. After he drinks the mead she gives him, he revives and moves to leave, claiming to be cursed by misfortune. But Sieglinde bids him to stay, saying that he can bring no misfortune to the "house where ill-luck lives". Their interest in each other has been growing, and seems to be turning into love.

Scene 2

Hunding returns and reluctantly offers Siegmund the hospitality demanded by custom. Sieglinde, increasingly fascinated by the visitor, urges him to tell his tale. Siegmund describes returning home one day with his father (who must be Wotan because we can hear the music of Valhalla.) They find his mother dead and his twin sister abducted. He then wandered with his father until he parted from him as well. Today he found a girl being forced into marriage and fought with the girl's relatives. However, his weapons were broken and the bride was killed, and he was forced to flee to Hunding's home. Initially Siegmund does not reveal his name, choosing to call himself 'Wehwalt', Woeful.

When Siegmund finishes, Hunding reveals that he is one of Siegmund's pursuers. He grants Siegmund a night's stay, but they are to do battle in the morning. As Hunding leaves the room with Sieglinde, she tries to call Sigmund's attention to the sword protruding from the tree.

Scene 3

Siegmund laments his misfortune, recalling his father's promise that he would find a sword when he most needed it.

Sieglinde returns, having drugged Hunding's drink to send him into a deep sleep. She reveals that she was forced into a marriage with Hunding. During their wedding feast, an old man (we can tell from the music that he must be Wotan) appeared and plunged a sword into the trunk of the ash tree in the center of the room, which Hunding and his companions had all failed to remove. She expresses her longing for the hero who could draw the sword and save her.

Suddenly a large outside door blows open and Siglinde starts with alarm. She asks who came, and Sigmund tells her it is the spring. He sings about the end of winter storms and the coming of more gentle weather. She answers that he is her spring. Siegmund expresses his love for her, which she reciprocates, and as she strives to understand her recognition of him, she realizes it is in the echo of her own voice, and reflection of her image, that she already knows him. When he speaks the name of his father, Wälse, she declares that he is Siegmund, and that the Wanderer left the sword for him.

Now Sigmund goes to the sword in the tree. He sings of his yearning desire for Siglinde, but the music is Alberich's curse of love from Rheingold. The lovers will probably not live happily ever after. Siegmund now easily draws the sword forth. Sieglinde tells him she is his twin sister. He names the blade Nothung (or needful, for this is the weapon that he needs for his forthcoming fight with Hunding). As the Act closes he calls her 'bride and sister', and draws her to him with passionate fervour.

Return to Index

Act 2

Scene 1

The Act opens with the music of the lovers flight from Hunding. When the curtain goes up Wotan is standing on a rocky mountainside with Brünnhilde, his Valkyrie daughter. He instructs Brünnhilde to protect Siegmund in his coming fight with Hunding. Off she goes to prepare, singing her battle cry.

Fricka, Wotan's wife and the guardian of wedlock, arrives demanding the punishment of Siegmund and Sieglinde, who have committed adultery and incest. She knows that Wotan, disguised as the mortal man Wälse, had fathered Siegmund and Sieglinde. Wotan protests that he requires a free hero (i.e. one that is not ruled by him) to aid his plans, but Fricka retorts that Siegmund is not a free hero, but an unwitting pawn of Wotan. Backed into a corner, Wotan promises Fricka that Siegmund is to die.

Scene 2

Fricka leaves, leaving Brünnhilde with a despairing Wotan. Wotan explains his problems: troubled by the warning delivered by Erda (at the end of Das Rheingold), he had seduced the earth-goddess to learn more of the prophesied doom; Brünnhilde was born to him by Erda. He had raised Brünnhilde and eight other daughters as the Valkyries, warrior maidens who bring fallen heroes to Valhalla to form an army against Alberich.

Valhalla's army will fail if Alberich should ever wield the Ring, which is in Fafner's possession. Using the Tarnhelm the giant Fafner has transformed himself into a dragon, lurking in a forest with the Nibelung treasure. Wotan cannot wrest the Ring from Fafner, who is bound to him by contract; he needs a free hero to defeat Fafner in his stead. However, as Fricka pointed out, he can only create thralls (i.e. servants) to himself. Bitterly, Wotan orders Brünnhilde to obey Fricka and ensure the death of his beloved child Siegmund.

Scene 3

Having fled from Hunding's hall Siegmund and Sieglinde enter the mountain pass, where Sieglinde faints in guilt and exhaustion.

Scene 4

Brünnhilde approaches Siegmund, telling him of Wotan's judgement for his impending death. Siegmund refuses to follow Brünnhilde to Valhalla when he finds out that Sieglinde cannot accompany him there. Impressed by his courage, Brünnhilde relents and agrees to protect Siegmund instead.

Scene 5

Hunding arrives with his horn and attacks Siegmund. Blessed by Brünnhilde, Siegmund begins to overpower Hunding, but Wotan appears and shatters Notung (Siegmund's sword) with his spear. Disarmed, Siegmund is slain by Hunding. Brünnhilde seizes Sieglinde and the shards of Notung, and flees on horseback. Wotan looks down on Siegmund's body, grieving. He strikes Hunding dead with a contemptuous gesture, and angrily sets out in pursuit of his lawless daughter.

Return to Index

Act 3

Scene 1

The act opens with the Ride of the Valkyries music. The eight maidens assemble on the summit of a mountain, each with a dead hero on her saddle. They are astonished when Brünnhilde arrives with a living woman, Siglinde.

Brünnhilde begs her sisters to help, but they dare not defy Wotan. Siglinde wants to die, but Brünnhilde tells her she should "live for love's sake." She is pregnant by Siegmund "with the world's greatest hero". Brünnhilde names him Siegfried. Now Sieglinde wants to live for her baby. She thanks Brünnhilde and calls her "glorious maid", and tells her "the reward of my gratitude will smile at you some day." [That last tune is called the redemption leitmotif. It is the last music we will hear at the end of the last Ring opera.]

Brünnhilde decides to stay and delay Wotan so Sieglinde can flee into the forest with the sword fragments. She will be safe there because the dragon who guards the Ring lives in that forest, and Wotan probably won't be going there.

Scene 2

Wotan arrives in wrath and orders his Valkyrie daughters to surrender Brünnhilde. He passes judgement on Brünnhilde: she is to be stripped of her Valkyrie status. She will be held in a magic sleep on the mountain, prey to any man who happens by. Dismayed, the other Valkyries flee.

Scene 3

Brünnhilde begs mercy of Wotan for herself, his favorite child. She recounts the courage of Siegmund and her decision to protect him, knowing that it was Wotan's true desire. She identifies her own actions as Wotan's true will.

Wotan consents to her last request: to encircle the mountaintop with magic flame, which will deter all but the bravest of heroes (who both know will be the yet unborn Siegfried). Wotan lays Brünnhilde down on a rock and, in a long embrace, kisses her eyes closed into an enchanted sleep. He summons Loge to ignite the circle of fire that will protect her. He slowly departs in sorrow, after pronouncing: "Whosoever fears the point of my spear shall not pass through the fire." Brünnhilde sleeps with the assurance that no one but the world's greatest hero can awaken her. The curtain falls.

Return to Index

This text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.