100 Great Operas and Their Stories: Act-By-Act Synopses (56 page)

Off-stage are heard the sounds of Hunding in pursuit. Light begins to fail; and in the semi-darkness Siegmund bids his sleeping sister farewell and hastens up the mountainside to meet the enemy. A moment later she awakens, calling for Siegmund, and is terrified by the sound of Hunding’s hunting horn. Up on the mountain a flash of lightning shows Siegmund already in battle. For a moment Brünnhilde hovers over the hero, defending him, but then a Ted light reveals Wotan, holding his spear between the two men. Siegmund’s sword is shattered on that spear, and Hunding drives his own into the body of his enemy.

As Brünnhilde rushes down to take up the body of Sieglinde, who has fainted away, Wotan turns contemptuously to Hunding. With a gesture of his hand he causes the desperate man to fall dead, and then, through the thunder and lightning, he sets off in pursuit of his disobedient child.

ACT III

The last act begins with the exciting
Ride of the Valkyries
, familiar in its orchestral garb to every concert-goer but far more exciting when the curtain goes up and the music is supplemented with the warrior maidens themselves, rushing over
the mountain tops, first four, then eight of them calling to each other, “Ho-yo-to-ho!” (The stage directions require that the girls come riding on horseback, each carrying a dead hero on the way to Valhalla. Few if any opera houses have ever assembled so gifted a female choir as to be able to perform this scene literally as horse opera.) Of the nine daughters of Wotan and Erda one, however, is missing. This is Brünnhilde, and when she arrives late on the scene, she brings with her not a warrior but a pregnant woman—Sieglinde. Swiftly she explains to her sisters who Sieglinde is and why Wotan is pursuing her. They are afraid to help her for fear of angering their father; nevertheless, they tell her that in the East, the giant Fafner, changed into the shape of a dragon, is guarding the Ring. There, Brünnhilde knows, Sieglinde will be safe from Wotan as he does not dare go near the place. She gives Sieglinde the pieces of Siegmund’s sword, which she has saved, and tells her that someday her son may put them together again. Thrilled with her mission, Sieglinde thanks her savior and hurries away.

Amid thunder and dark clouds Wotan now arrives on the scene. At first her sisters try to hide Brünnhilde and to plead for her, but Wotan is adamant and calls on her to come forth. With great dignity she does so and asks for her sentence. It is that she may no longer serve her father, that henceforth she shall no longer be a Valkyrie, and that she shall serve, one day, a mortal husband. Again her sisters try to plead for her; again he turns on them; and he threatens that anyone who helps her shall share her fate. Then, on his stern command, they ride swiftly off, leaving Brünnhilde alone with Wotan. After a long silence Brünnhilde raises herself from her prostrate position and asks, “Was it so shameful, what I have done?”
(War es so schmählich?)
With fine feminine logic she points out that she did only what he himself wished he might have done. The fire of Wotan’s anger goes out of him, but not the steel. At great length, and with great sorrow, he tells her that they must now be forever parted. He must put her to sleep, and she shall belong to the first man who shall come upon her. At least, she begs, let it not be a coward who claims.
Let him build around her sleeping place a fiery flame to guard her.

Deeply moved, Wotan raises her to her feet and sings his noble and heroic farewell, promising the fire that she has requested. Slowly she falls asleep; he lays her on a grassy mound; he kisses her once more, covers her with her shield, and solemnly walks to the center of the stage. Lifting his spear, he commands Loge to appear. This is where the
Magic Fire Music
is played. Fire starts springing up on every side as Wotan directs; and when it is all over the stage, he pronounces a final spell: “Only the man who does not fear my spear may walk through this fire!” Then, after one last look at his beloved daughter, he strides through the fire himself.

SIEGFRIED

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

Time: mythological

Place: Germany

First performance at Bayreuth, August 16, 1876

    Again a number of years have passed between the operas of the
Ring
cycle, though this time it is easier to estimate about how many. Sieglinde left the last act of
Die Walküre
to wander in the direction of the home of the Nibelungs. There she was found by Mime, Alberich’s smithy brother; there she died giving birth to her son, who, Brünnhilde had told her, was to be named Siegfried; there he had grown up, with Mime as his foster father, into a healthy, arrogant, rude young man, delighting in the creatures of the forest and despising the dwarf who has raised him.

ACT I

Shortly after the curtain rises, we learn of Mime’s motives in having taken the trouble to rear the child. He sits at his
forge in a forest clearing outside the cave he inhabits, muttering aloud to himself as he works halfheartedly at a sword for Siegfried—halfheartedly because he knows that the powerful youngster will disgustedly smash it to pieces as he has done with all of Mime’s other inferior swords. Someday he hopes an invincible sword may be made of the pieces of Nothung, which Sieglinde had left with him, but he is not strong enough to forge them himself. With this sword, Mime believes, Siegfried will be able to slay Fafner and give his foster father the Ring, with all the power it carries. Fafner, for his part, having seized the whole hoard of gold (at the end of
Das Rheingold)
, has used the Tarnhelm to change himself into a huge dragon and is so dull-witted that he can find nothing better to do with the gold than to lie on it.

With this much exposition out of the way, Siegfried comes in hallooing and driving before him a young bear which he has brought simply to frighten the dwarf. He insults Mime, wondering why he ever comes home when the animals are so much better company than this ugly fellow. Whiningly (but not without considerable justification, it would seem) Mime complains of the shabby reward he gets for having brought Siegfried up, serving both as father and as mother. Siegfried remains unimpressed by these complaints, which he has doubtless heard often, and finally manages to elicit from Mime what little he knows of his mother, that is, her name and the circumstances of his birth, for Mime professes ignorance of her distinguished paternity. Nor will he tell Siegfried who his father was. But he does tell him about the broken sword that Sieglinde had left and, demanding that Mime forge it for him at once, Siegfried dashes off once more to rejoin his furry and feathered friends.

With Siegfried gone, Mime has a second visitor—a distinguished-looking old gentleman with a staff and a long blue coat, who boasts of his great wisdom and calls himself “Wanderer.” Mime is not receiving this afternoon and unceremoniously asks the old fellow to be on his way. Quite unperturbed, the Wanderer seats himself at the hearth and offers to demonstrate his wisdom by answering any three questions put to
him. His head shall be the forfeit if he fails. Mime, who has been boasting of his own native intelligence, cannot resist the offer and comes up with three questions in a category on which the Wanderer is the top expert—for, as can be learned from the Cast of Characters, he is Wotan in disguise. The questions are: who inhabits the deepest caverns, who rests on the “back of the earth,” and who lives in the cloudy heights? The answers—each given with additional detail—are the Nibelungs, the giants, and the gods.

Admitting the answers to be quite correct, Mime again invites his guest to leave. But Wotan insists that he too now has the right to ask three questions, and his are much harder. The first two are answered without difficulty, the correct answers being “the Wälsungs” and “Nothung.” In giving these answers, with added detail, Mime shows that he knows a good deal more about family history than he has yet divulged to Siegfried. But the third question (an unfair one, as it deals with the future) floors the dwarf. It is: who is going to put the pieces of Nothung together again? And when Mime, in great fright, admits he does not know, Wotan tells him that it will be someone who has never experienced fear. However, he will not demand Mime’s head: let that be taken, also, by one who knows no fear. And the Wanderer wanders off.

Left alone, Mime is overcome by fright. The orchestra whips up a fury of forest sounds; in the distance the bellowing of the dragon is heard; and, thinking that Fafner is on his trail, he hides, trembling, behind the anvil. When Siegfried returns, demanding his sword, he cannot at first find the dwarf. Finally the little fellow comes out, tells him that Nothung can be fashioned only by one who has not experienced fear, and asks Siegfried whether he knows anything about that emotion. Siegfried does not (Mime blaming himself for never having “taught” it to him) and demands instruction. But no matter how vividly Mime describes the frightening sounds of the forest at night and the reactions they produce in himself, the simple Siegfried cannot make sense of it. Maybe, suggests Mime, Siegfried could learn fear by visiting the cave of the fearsome dragon who lives not very far away. Siegfried, ever
eager for instruction, begs to be led there, but first he must have the sword. And, as Mime clearly cannot fashion it himself, Siegfried takes up the pieces and begins to work at the forge. Mime, sitting by, offers professional counsel, but Siegfried, apparently inspired, goes about it eagerly in his own way. Meantime, the dwarf hopes that if Siegfried makes the sword and kills Fafner, he himself will bring him a drink with a sleeping potion in it, kill the youngster, and then make himself master of the gold. Siegfried, pounding away at his work, sings the exciting
Forging Song (Nothung! Nothung!)
, and when the sword has been plunged into the water trough and the hilt fashioned, he waves it aloft exultingly and crashes it down on the anvil, which splits in two. Mime falls terrified to the ground.

ACT II

Deep in the woods, Alberich squats in the dark outside the cave of Fafner, awaiting the day which shall see the dragon slain. No love is lost between him and Wotan, who comes by and exchanges a number of unpleasant speeches with the dwarf. Wotan tells him of the hero who is coming to fight the dragon, a youngster who knows nothing about the gods or about the Ring, and who is acting wholly without guidance. Together, Wotan and Alberich awaken the dragon, and the latter suggests that a fight with a well-armed enemy can be avoided if he will just give up the Ring. Fafner’s laconic answer is a request to leave him alone
(Lasst mich schlafen!)
. With a laugh and a suggestion that Alberich keep an eye on his brother Mime, Wotan disappears into the forest.

With Alberich once more in his hiding place, dawn begins to break, and presently Siegfried and Mime arrive on the scene. “This is the place,” says Mime, and Siegfried hopes now to learn about fear. Mime describes the terrors of the dragon graphically enough, including the fierce, snapping jaws, the poison that drips from the mouth, the powerful tail that can snap a man’s bones as if they were glass; but Siegfried only wants to know whether the beast has a heart which may
be pierced by Nothung, and then he drives his mentor away.

Waiting for the dragon to come out for his midday drink, Siegfried lies down under the trees, and the episode known to concert-goers as
Forest Murmurs (Waldweben)
ensues. Siegfried wonders about his mother; he listens to the songs of the birds; he tries to converse with them through blowing first on a reed, then on his horn; but he cannot understand what the birdcalls seem to be telling him. His homemade music, however, awakens the dragon, who comes forth to see what is disturbing him. Siegfried—not the least disturbed by the dragon’s horrible features or by the bellowing basso whose voice reaches him through a speaking trumpet in the dragon’s jaws—asks to be instructed about fear. Annoyed by the young man’s brashness, the dragon attacks him; Siegfried wounds him in the tail; and then, when the monster rises in wrath, the opportunity presents itself to stab him to the heart. With a final warning to beware whoever it was who put him up to this murder, Fafner shudders and expires. But as Siegfried draws out his sword, a drop of blood falls on his fingers; he puts them into his mouth to wipe it off; and, lo, he can now understand the birds. The voice of one of them (an off-stage soprano) tells him about the hoard of gold, about the Tarnhelm, and about the omnipotent Ring. With thanks Siegfried enters the cave.

The disappearance of Siegfried is the signal for the two Nibelung brothers to steal in from their respective watching posts. Neither is pleased to see the other, and they engage in a snarling contest probably intended to be funny. Alberich, the more forceful of the two, gets the upper hand, denying Mime even the Tarnhelm from all the hoard, which Alberich fully expects to get for himself.

But when Siegfried emerges from the cave, they see that he already has both the Tarnhelm and the Ring, having taken them on the advice of the bird and passed over all the rest of the gold. The Nibelungs slink away in different directions; and when Siegfried has put the Ring on his finger and stuck the Tarnhelm into his belt, he hears the bird offering further advice. “Don’t trust Mime” is what he hears; and he is also
told that by the power of the dragon’s blood he has drunk he will be able to understand the real meaning of Mime’s words no matter what he appears to be saying.