Götterdämmerung, Act III, from Der Ring des Nibelungen 

The Boston Symphony Orchestra first played music from Götterdämmerung—Act III’s orchestral “Siegfried’s Funeral Music”—under George Henschel in Boston on February 17, 1883, four days after the composer’s death. The first Tanglewood performance of music from the opera was by the BSO under Pierre Monteux’s direction on August 2, 1852, in the Shed: “Siegfried’s Funeral Music” plus Brünnhilde’s Immolation Scene, the latter featuring soprano Margaret Harshaw. The BSO performed the entirety of Götterdämmerung, Act III, at Symphony Hall, Boston, under Bernard Haitink’s direction in April 1994, with Jane Eaglen as Brünnhilde and René Kollo as Siegfried, with a repeat performance—the first at Tanglewood—on August 19, 1994, under Haitink, Eaglen now pairing with tenor Gary Lakes. James Levine led the first performance of Götterdämmerung, Act III, at Tanglewood with the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra on July 16, 2005, with Deborah Voigt as Brünnhilde and Christian Franz as Siegfried, in a concert also featuring Act I of Die Walküre.  

The history of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, in which Act III of Götterdämmerung (“Twilight of the Gods”) represents the final action, is long and complicated. Wagner originally conceived single opera based on the Nibelung myth as a single opera entitled Siegfrieds Tod (“Siegfried’s Death”)—the predecessor to the work we know as Götterdämmerung (“Twilight of the Gods”). He ultimately expanded this backwards, deeming it necessary to flesh out additional background to each successive stage of his epic drama. The prose sketches for Der junge Siegfried (“The Young Siegfried,” ultimately just Siegfried), Das Rheingold, and Die Walküre date from the early 1850s, and it was also around this time that Wagner settled on the overall title for his massive work: Der Ring des Nibelungen. Ein Bühnenfestspiel für drei Tage und einen Vorabend (“The Nibelung’s Ring. A Stage-Festival-Play for three days and a preliminary evening”). Musical sketches for Siegfried’s Death date to 1850, but the four operas of the Ring were composed essentially in order over a twenty-year span. The full score of Das Rheingold was completed in May 1854, that of Die Walküre in March 1856. From September 1856 until July 1857 Wagner wrote the music for Acts I and II of Siegfried, then broke off to compose Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, both of which he somehow felt would be easier to produce! He returned to Siegfried only in March 1869 and continued working with a strength, determination, and certainty that would flow unimpeded through the closing pages of Götterdämmerung five years later. 

Perhaps the most important thing the uninitiated listener needs to know about Wagner’s music is that, though conceived for the theater, it is essentially symphonic in its treatment of the orchestra. Wagner uses the orchestra to support some of the largest musical structures ever conceived. He does this in two basic ways: (1) through his use of specific “leitmotifs,” musical motives or themes that represent not just characters and objects, but even—sometimes through varied transformations along the way of motives previously introduced—thoughts and psychological states; and (2) through the large-scale repetition or reinterpretation of whole chunks of music, thereby providing significant points of arrival within both the musical structure and the dramatic progress of the story. For example, in the final act of Götterdämmerung, Siegfried dies to the same music that has earlier accompanied Brünnhilde’s awakening at the end of the third opera, Siegfried. At the very end of the Ring, Brünnhilde’s “Immolation Scene” recapitulates some of the music from the “Norn Scene” (the Norns being Nordic analogues to the Fates of other mythologies) first heard in the Prologue to Götterdämmerung and the opera’s first act. Wagner himself could not conveniently summarize what the Ring is actually about and, because of changes he made to his text along the way, was ultimately left to suggest that the music itself had to provide the last word. Suffice to say that the Ring is about power, greed, love, gods, humans, society, loyalty, betrayal, hope, and redemption (among various other things that its interpreters have seen fit to catalogue). 

In the second Ring opera, Die Walküre, the union of the brother/sister pair Siegmund and Sieglinde leads ultimately to the birth of their son, the hero Siegfried. Playing out in Götterdämmerung, Act III, are the final stages of his relationship with Brünnhilde, the Valkyrie (a kind of demigoddess responsible for transporting fallen human heroes to Valhalla) and, concurrently, the final stages of the entire Ring story, harking back to the events of the preliminary” opera, Das Rheingold. Musically, material introduced along the way—such as the two themes associated with Siegfried (his horn call, heard at the very start of Götterdämmerung III, and the related theme representing “Siegfried as hero”)—take on greater meaning with each recurrence. And then of course there are the great passages in Götterdämmerung III for orchestra alone—Siegfried’s funeral march, and the spectacular finale to Brünnhilde’s closing Immolation Scene. 

In Das Rheingold, the Ring’s prologue opera, Alberich, the ruler of a subterranean race called the Nibelungs, steals the Rhinegold from its resting place in the waters of the Rhine River and forges it into a ring intended to bring its wearer ultimate power. (Alberich is the Nibelung of the cycle’s title, “The Nibelung’s Ring.”) By the time Rheingold has ended, Wotan, the head god, has stolen the ring from Alberich, who in turn lays upon the ring a curse that condemns its wearer to death. Wotan loses the ring to the giants Fasolt and Fafner as part of his payment to them for their building Valhalla. Fafner kills Fasolt so he alone can have the ring, and the treasure that accompanies it, for himself (he turns up again in Siegfried, transformed into a dragon). 

Wotan resolves to regain the ring, but, for complicated cosmic reasons, can only do this indirectly, through an individual acting independently. To this end he fathers Siegmund (and, as it happens, Siegmund’s twin, Sieglinde) by a mortal mother. In Die Walküre, Siegmund and Sieglinde, having been separated as infants, meet and immediately fall in love. Siegmund is killed by Sieglinde’s husband Hunding, but Sieglinde has become pregnant. Her child will be Siegfried, the principal figure of the third opera. 

In the last act of Siegfried, the hero, after a series of his own adventures (including killing the dragon Fafner and acquiring the ring for himself), awakens the now-mortal Brünnhilde from the years-long sleep on a flame-encircled crag to which her father Wotan condemned her for disobeying him by attempting (in Act II of Die Walküre) to save Siegmund. 

The opening Prologue to Götterdämmerung begins with a scene for the three Norns, followed by Siegfried and Brünnhilde’s parting in a rapturous duet, the end of which leads directly into Siegfried’s departure in search of further adventure. Act I is set in the hall of the Gibichung clan. The Nibelung Alberich’s son Hagen, half-brother of the Gibichung Gunther, is intent on regaining the ring for his father. 

Siegfried has given the ring as a token of his love to Brünnhilde. Having sworn blood-brotherhood with Gunther, Siegfried falls in love with Gunther’s sister Gutrune under the influence of a potion that wipes all recollection of Brünnhilde from his memory. At Hagen’s urging, Siegfried, disguised as Gunther, once more breaks through the fire surrounding the Valkyries’ rock and claims Brünnhilde in Gunther’s name, wresting back the ring in the process. In Act II of Götterdämmerung, Brünnhilde, convinced that Siegfried has betrayed her, swears vengeance. So does Gunther, who, having expected Brünnhilde to become his own bride, has no reason to disbelieve Brünnhilde’s claim that her marriage to Siegfried has already been consummated. 

This vengeance is played out in Götterdämmerung, Act III, when, during a hunting party, Hagen stabs Siegfried in the back—the only part of his body left unprotected by Brünnhilde’s magic spells, since he would never have turned his back on a foe—and kills him, but only after restoring his memory by means of another potion. Siegfried dies with Brünnhilde’s name on his lips, and his body is borne back to the Gibichung hall, the ring still on his finger, to the dramatic strains of his funeral procession, which weaves a number of prominent motives—among them “Fate,” the broad theme of “Siegfried as Hero,” and the “Sword”—into a powerful musical tapestry. 

Following the arrival of the funeral procession at the Gibichung hall, Hagen kills Gunther in a struggle over the ring, echoing the giant Fafner’s murder of his brother Fasolt in Das Rheingold. As Hagen steps forward to take the ring from Siegfried’s finger, the dead hero’s hand raises itself threateningly, putting him off and provoking general astonishment. Brünnhilde enters, calming the assemblage and revealing that they have all been pawns in the hands of the gods. In a final, inspired apostrophe to the fallen hero, Brünnhilde asks that a funeral pyre be built on which she will join him in death, its fire cleansing the ring of the curse. This is the start of the Immolation Scene that concludes Wagner’s cycle. 

Having now reached an understanding of all that has transpired, Brünnhilde sends Wotan’s message-bearing ravens back to Valhalla with the warning that even the home of the gods will be consumed. Ecstatically, she casts a torch on the pyre, mounts her horse, and leaps into the flames. At the height of the conflagration, the Rhine overflows its banks and the three Rhinemaidens—the original guardians of the Rhinegold—appear, dragging Hagen into the watery depths as he attempts to seize the ring for himself. As the flames rise up to consume Valhalla, the curtain falls, and the music of the “Redemption” motive heard on high in the violins brings Der Ring des Nibelungen to its close. 

MARC MANDEL 

Marc Mandel, former Director of Program Publications for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, joined the staff of the BSO in November 1978 and managed the orchestra’s program book from 1979 until his retirement in July 2020.