100 Great Operas and Their Stories: Act-By-Act Synopses (57 page)

Thus it is that when Mime speaks to him again and tries to wheedle Siegfried into trusting him, the words that come out betray his real intent. He hates Siegfried and his whole race, and he plans to murder him with his own sword as soon as he has got him to sleep. And when he actually offers him the drugged drink, Siegfried, in utter disgust, kills him with one blow of the sword. He wastes no sentiment on the death of his foster father, but throws the body into the cave and then drags the body of the dragon to guard over it. As for Alberich, he emits a peal of laughter from his hiding place when he sees his brother killed.

Once more the hero lies down below the branches and meditates on his aloneness in this world. Once more the bird cheers him up. “Hi, Siegfried,” it calls, and proceeds to tell him about the glorious bride that awaits him, asleep and surrounded by fire. Her name is Brünnhilde, and she will belong to one who can go through the fire and who knows no fear. Laughing delightedly, Siegfried cries, “I’m, the stupid boy who doesn’t know how to be afraid,” and he asks the bird to show him the way. By flying overhead before him the bird does just that as the act closes.

ACT III

Scene 1
It is a wild night at the foot of a great mountain, and Wotan calls upon Erda, the nature goddess and the mother of the Valkyries, to aid him once more with her wisdom. Looking very strange in a bluish light, her hair and cloak glowing, she rises through the ground, irritated, in a dignified manner, over being awakened from a long slumber. He tells her what is troubling him, but she is not much help. First she advises him to go to the Norns, the weavers of fate; and when he tells her that they cannot advise him, she suggests that he consult Brünnhilde. Only then does she learn what has happened to her daughter. She thoroughly disapproves of the
whole business and only wants to go back to sleep. But before she goes, Wotan tells her that he is now completely resigned to the destruction of the gods, and that his power shall be inherited by young Siegfried, who is full of the joy of love, who knows no malice, and who shall awaken Brünnhilde. And when Brünnhilde awakes, she shall perform a great deed for redeeming the world.

Erda returns to her underground slumbers; the scene grows brighter; and a few moments later Siegfried is led in by the bird, who flies off on sight of Wotan. Siegfried naturally does not recognize his grandfather and demands to know the way to the sleeping maiden. The old man answers him with a great many references to things the boy can scarcely understand (and the audience may be expected to have some difficulties as well.) Finally, however, he makes it clear that it was he who had put the girl to sleep, whereupon Siegfried assumes that the Wanderer must be an enemy of the family. Therefore, when Wotan puts up his spear, barring the way up the mountain to Brünnhilde, Siegfried impatiently shatters it with his sword, Nothung. This is apparently a convincing and not entirely unsatisfactory symbol to Wotan of the waning of his own power and the growing might of the new order. He invites Siegfried to advance and he himself disappears. “The whole stage,” to quote the directions, “fills itself with a sea of surging flames,” and Siegfried disappears into them, blowing his horn, and crying, “Hoho! … Now I shall catch me a darling companion!”

Scene 2
As the orchestra spins out a bright web of significant themes, clouds cover the foreground of the stage, and when they have disappeared, we are once more on the spot where Wotan had put Brünnhilde to sleep at the end of
Die Walküre
. Siegfried climbs down the mountainside, first seeing Brünnhilde’s horse, Grane, and then the sleeping girl herself. As she is clothed in armor, her visor down, he takes her to be a man; and even when he lifts the helmet and her bright, yellow hair falls out, he is not enlightened. We must remember that he had probably never before seen a human female in his life. Finally, noting that the “warrior” is breathing heavily,
he cuts off the breastplate, staggers back, and cries, “That is no man!” A completely new emotion surges through him; he calls upon his mother for help; he imagines that for the first time he is experiencing fear. But he does know, now, that it is a woman he sees, and his instinct prompts him to implant a long and ardent kiss upon her lips.

This finally awakens Brünnhilde from a sleep that had begun before Siegfried was born. Her first reaction is one of joy at seeing the sun. It is not long, however, before she knows who Siegfried must be. She greets him by name; she tells him of how she had known him and loved him even before his birth; and in the long duet that constitutes the balance of the scene many emotions are gone through. Siegfried’s are understandably simple: he is proud of his accomplishment, and he longs to embrace Brünnhilde. Her emotions are rather more complex, for she realizes that now she is no longer a goddess, that no god had ever touched her, and that her rescuer is a mortal, or at best a demigod. At the same time she is deeply attracted to the handsome young fellow (who is her nephew, though that does not cross the mind of either of them); and though she seems to know somehow that the reign of the gods is doomed, she welcomes a life that promises a glowing love and a laughing death. The opera ends as their voices join in a passionate acceptance of their love and their fate.

DIE GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG

(The Twilight of the Gods)

Opera in prologue and three acts by Richard
Wagner with libretto in German by the composer

Time: mythological

Place: Germany

First performance at Bayreuth, April 17, 1876

    It will be recalled that one of the bits of gossip retailed to Brünnhilde by her father during Act II of
Die Walküre
was that Alberich had bribed a mortal woman to bear him a child. This child, an almost exact contemporary of Siegfried’s, grew up to be a saturnine young fellow named Hagen. His mother was Grimhilde, wife of a respectable Teutonic chieftain named Gibich, and she also had two legitimate children named Gunther and Gutrune. When
Die Götterdämmerung
begins, Gunther is King of the Gibichungs, and Gutrune and Hagen live with him. None of the three is married.

PROLOGUE

It is night, and still so dark that the unwarned spectator does not know till much later that the scene is Brünnhilde’s rock, where she was left by Wotan and found by Siegfried. The three Norns (who roughly correspond in Norse mythology to the three Fates or Parcae of Greek and Roman myth) sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the deaths of gods. One of them tells how Wotan many years ago had traded an eye for a drink of the well of wisdom. Now Wotan, who is always represented as missing one eye, had told Fricka, during the course of their
Rheingold
argument, that he had lost it in wooing her. Whether this inconsistency is owing to forgetfulness on Wagner’s part or whether it is a subtle reminder that the ruler of the gods was not above telling a fib when arguing with a lady, no one exactly knows. Either explanation will do.

Wotan, we also learn, had fashioned his spear from a branch of the world tree (i.e., Yggdrasill’s ash). Since then the ash has shriveled and the well of wisdom dried up; Wotan has had the Valhalla heroes pile up the boughs of the tree around the fortress of the gods; and heroes and gods now sit in Valhalla, in state, waiting for a fire to consume both them and it. All the time the Norns relate this dismal tale, they are passing a golden rope to each other. But when they ask each other how soon the fire will start and what will become of Alberich’s gold, the rope suddenly breaks. Frightened, they tie themselves together with the pieces and run off crying: “To mother!”

This mysterious and somewhat mystifying scene prepares one for the final catastrophe in Act III; but as it is not strictly necessary dramatically and as the opera is extremely long, it is often omitted.

During an orchestral interlude day breaks, and we soon behold Siegfried and Brünnhilde issuing from the cave. They have exchanged pledges of love; he has learned wisdom from her; and now he is being sent forth to do great deeds. Before he goes, however, he gives her his Ring to guard her, and she
gives him Grane, her horse, to ride. After a heroic farewell, he starts down the mountainside; she looks after him for a while; and the curtain descends as the orchestra plays the eloquent music of
Siegfried’s Rhine Journey
, a glorious tissue of many of the most significant motives of the
Ring
.

ACT I

Scene 1
The hall of the Gibichungs is an airy place, and through the back of it may be seen the river Rhine. Hagen, obviously a more intelligent, determined, and capable being than either of his half siblings, is offering some family advice and a rather tricky plan. It is time for both of them to get married, he says, and he thinks it can be arranged. Brünnhilde is the noblest woman in the world and would make Gunther a fine wife. Unfortunately, she can be won only by a hero who will fight his way through fire, and Gunther is not quite up to that. Siegfried, however, is. Now, if Siegfried could be got to fall in love with Gutrune (and what a fine match that would be!), he might be persuaded to win Brünnhilde to please a brother-in-law. And to get Siegfried attracted to Gutrune, all that may be necessary is a magical potion which is in the wine closet and which will make Siegfried forget Brünnhilde. Gunther, far from being shocked by Hagen’s underhanded scheming, thanks his mother’s memory for having produced such a bastard. As for Gutrune, she can barely wait to see a hero like Siegfried.

Nor does she have long to wait. Siegfried comes sailing down the Rhine in a boat (just where he got it is not made clear, and so most impresarios do not go to the expense of supplying it), and steps into the Gibichung hall. He is most cordially welcomed by the family; and Hagen, in the course of the Gibichung equivalent of small talk, elicits the interesting information from Siegfried that the only portions of Fafner’s gold hoard he had taken were the Tarnhelm, which he has in his belt, and the Ring, which he has given to a woman. (“Brünnhilde!” cries the villain Hagen, aside.)

Gutrune, who was immediately covered with girlish wonder
on sight of the handsome hero and had retired in confusion, returns with the drink of welcome, the one with the power of making its drinker forget everything; and as soon as Siegfried has drunk it, he falls spang in love with the girl. (Siegfried’s easy susceptibility to women makes even Romeo look like a laggard.) He proposes for her at once, and a pact is made whereby he is to win Brünnhilde for Gunther in exchange for Gutrune. The pure and simple hero can no longer recall his recent “marriage.” A solemn oath of blood friendship is sworn; Gunther and Siegfried cut their arms with their swords and let some blood drop into a horn; and both drink. Hagen, however, refuses to join in the oath: he says his nature is not so noble as theirs and his blood would poison the drink.

They waste no time. Gunther and Siegfried depart in the boat on their marital mission; Gutrune is enraptured with the idea of her own impending marriage; and Hagen sits down before the door of the house, on guard with spear and shield, muttering to himself about the Ring, and how he will get it through the agency of this merry team of wooers.

Scene 2
During an orchestral interlude the scene changes back to Brünnhilde’s rock, where the ex-Valkyrie is admiring the Ring and covering it with kisses. Suddenly she hears a sound she had not heard in some twenty years—the wild riding of one of her sister Valkyries. It is Waltraute who arrives, bearing sinister tidings of Valhalla. In a long passage known as
Waltraute’s Narrative
, she tells of the doom that seems to be preparing for the gods and of a remark of Wotan’s, made during a dream, to the effect that only the return of the Ring to the Rhinemaidens will lift the curse. On her own initiative Waltraute has made this journey to beg Brünnhilde to avert the doom of the gods by returning the bauble. But Brünnhilde is utterly devoted to Siegfried: she would rather have Valhalla fall into ruins than give up this pledge of love. Waltraute utters a despairing cry and dashes away.

Evening begins to fall, and the surrounding fires grow brighter. Suddenly a frightening figure looms before Brünnhilde. It is Siegfried, but by the magic of the Tarnhelm, he has taken on the form of Gunther and also his lower voice.
He announces that he has come to make her his bride, he, Gunther, the Gibichung. Desperately Brünnhilde tries to defend herself, holding out the Ring in the thought that its power will save her. But the Ring has no power over Siegfried. He chases her across the stage; he seizes her with violence; he roughly tears the Ring from her finger; and when she falls utterly exhausted into his arms, he takes her toward the cave. But before he follows her into it, he draws out his sword and swears, by his oath of brotherhood, to lay it between himself and Gunther’s bride.