Richard Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung, after the prelude of The Rhinegold, opens in earnest with The Valkyrie — the story of how, in pursuing his ambitious plan, Wotan is forced to sacrifice first his own son, then his daughter Brunnhilde, who is the incarnation of all that is sweet and beautiful in his own nature. She shares, it is true, his curiously limited immortality — an immortality that may be, and finally is, curtailed — but she can suffer a punishment worse to her than extinction.
The prelude opens with the roar and hoarse scream of the storm as it dashes through the forest - the plash of the rain, the flashing of lightning and the roll of the thunder. The musical idea was obviously suggested by Schubert's "Erlkoeng." In each we have the same rapidly-reiterated notes in the upper part, and Wagner's bars are simply a variant of Schubert's.
The curtain rises on Hundiing's hut; the door is burst open, and Siegmund tumbles in exhausted, and falls before the fire. Sieglinde gives him mead, and one sees it is a case of love at first sight. Hunding enters, and, finding Siegmund to be an enemy of his, gives him until morning, and tells him that then he must fight.
Sieglinde drugs her husband's night-draught, and, while he is sleeping, tells Siegmund of how, when she was abducted, and compelled against her will to marry Hunding, a gray-bearded stranger came in, with his hat drawn over one eye — Wotan had but one eye — and wearing a dark-blue cloak marked with stars, suggested by the deep-blue star-pierced sky by night.
Wotan drove a sword into the ash trunk, and, declaring that only a man strong enough to draw it out should wield it, went his way. Many have tried, and none succeeded.
Siegmund at once draws it, and the pair fly. There has been some of Wagner's finest and freshest love-music, and one entrancing effect is got when a puff of wind suddenly blows the door open. The storm has ceased, and there we see the forest bathed in a spring moonlight, the raindrops on the young leaves dancing and gleaming. It is at this moment Siegmund sings the wonderful spring song.
In the next act Wotan tells Brunnhilde she must protect Siegmund in the coming fight; but Fricka seeks him out in this rocky place amongst the hills, and compels him to promise on oath that Siegmund shall die to atone for his violation of the sacred rite of marriage. Brunnhilde re-enters, and then occurs a scene which has caused much debate. At enormous length Wotan recounts to her practically all we have already seen and heard before. It may be, as I have said, that Wagner wanted to make each opera comprehensible in itself, without reference to the others; it may be that his artistic sense forced him to make it clearer and ever clearer that each tragedy as it happens is Wotan's tragedy; but, in any case, I, for one, never regret when the scene is somewhat shorn.
Wotan is defeated in this attempt to observe the word of the law, but break the spirit. He cannot wield the sword himself, but he made it and placed it where and so that the hero alone could take it. The hero is of the seed of his loins, and the fact that Wotan has made life bitter for him counts for nothing against that fact; and, finally, though he could not himself aid Siegmund, he ordered his daughter to do so.
He wished Siegmund to act of his own free-will, and yet to do what he, Wotan, wanted. Checked by Fricka, he revokes his command to Brunnhilde, and goes off cursing fate.
Siegmund and Sieglinde enter, flying before Hunding; Sieglinde faints, and at last sleeps; and then Brunnhilde steps forward from among the rocks in the gloomy half-light — a stern, imposing, indeed an awful, figure, the herald of death, seen only by warriors about to die.
The Fate theme sounds from the orchestra, and another melody, out of which nearly the whole scene is woven, is heard, and then, to a simple chord — supernatural, ghostly in its effect — she calls Siegmund.
She tells him he is to die and go with her to Valhalla. He pleads in vain; she (simply, be it remembered, a part of her father's will) cannot understand why he should refuse to go where his father and so many famous warriors have already gone. "So young and fair, and yet so cold and stern!" Siegmund exclaims; and at last he asks whether Sieglinde will also be there. "Siegmund will see Sieglinde no more," she replies to a quiet phrase of unspeakable pathos. Then Siegmund refuses to go with her, and he draws his sword to slay first Sieglinde, then himself.
Brunnhilde is overwhelmed by the revelation of a love so devoted, and at last promises to help him. It is her own nature as is revealed to her. Night and storm come on; Hunding's horn is heard as he comes nearer and nearer; Siegmund mounts amongst the rocks to meet him; a flash of lightning reveals them in the act of fighting; Brunnhilde hovers above to strike for him, when Wotan appears in a fiery glare and smashes Siegmund's sword, so that Hunding's spear passes through him.
Sieglinde has awakened to see this and collapses; Brunnhilde rapidly descends, and, gathering the fragments of the shattered sword, hurries Sieglinde off to seek shelter from Wotan's wrath. Wotan kills Hunding with a contemptuous gesture, telling him to say to Fricka that her will has been accomplished. He rests there for a moment, then goes off in flaming wrath. The tragedy has gone a step onward; he has killed his son, and now must punish Brunnhilde — put away love from himself to the end that he may enjoy a loveless empire.
The music throughout the act is amongst Wagner's noblest and most beautiful and dramatic. Every phrase given to Fricka proclaims her queenly and overbearing, with right and power on her side, and relentless determination to use them. Then there is the Valkyries' war-whoop — well known from its use in the Valkyries' Ride. Sieglinde has tender, piteous cries. In the scene of pleading and counter-pleading between Siegmund and Brunnhilde we have Wagner at the zenith of his powers: the pleading of the man, the calm, cold majesty of the Valkyrie, awe and pathos and heroic defiance, are all there.
From the technical point of view, the scene is equal to Tristan: the continuous sweep of the music, with its ever-changing colours and emotions, is almost supermasterly. The tragedy at the end of the first act of Die Walkuere is a stage rather than a musical effect, and it is made the more powerful by being delayed so long and then arriving with such terrific swiftness.
Richard Wagner's The Valkyrie continued...
