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The storm slowly dies away; Brünnhilda rises and pleads her cause "Is this crime of mine so shameful? in protecting Siegmund the Volsung I simply followed what I knew to be the dictates of your own innermost heart." At first Wotan will scarcely hear her; gradually he relents.
The last hour of the old gods has come; the Norns spin their web on the Valkyries' rock; it breaks, and they sink into the earth, knowing that all is finished. Dawn breaks, and Siegfried and Brünnhilda come out of their cavern; Siegfried must now go forth to deeds of derring-do, for, like Lovelace, "how could he love her, dear, so much, loved he not honour more?"
Brünnhilda comes in, whooping her war-call, but her voice drops at the sight of Fricka. Fricka, who thoroughly despises all the Valkyrie maidens as being born out of true wedlock, tells her to take her orders from Wotan, and goes off triumphant. Wotan, deeply despondent, terrifies Brünnhilda with his grief; she casts down her spear and shield and kneels before him, imploring him to tell the cause.
Brünnhilda knows Wotan to be angry by the raging storm that marks his path through the heavens, by the lightnings and thunders; and we have all enough of our primitive ancestors in us to feel in some degree as they felt indeed, plenty of people to-day see in a storm a manifestation of the wrath of the Almighty. Human anger has never been put into music.
We hear the Fate theme a strange phrase that seems to question destiny without ever getting an answer and a subject taken bodily from Mendelssohn and made into a new thing filled with a curious blending of wistful and tender pity, mystery and power. It gives us a glimpse into the very heart of Brünnhilda, obeying her father because she must, and revolting against the task.
Gunther thinks he has been dishonoured; Brunnhilda is furious at her betrayal; Hagen wants to get the ring; and the three decide that Siegfried must die. There can be no explaining away the draught. In Tristan it is not essential that the philtre is a true love-philtre, but here the case is different.
Then follows the scene where Siegfried lies in the sun and hears the wind murmuring in the trees, and then listens to the bird as it sings of Brunnhilda asleep far away on the mountains, and goes off to find her all admirably painted in the freshest tints. The last act opens in the mountains.
But Brünnhilda is now wholly woman and has no sympathy with the gods; she refuses the Ring, and Waltraute goes off in despair. The flames begin to flicker and dance; Siegfried's horn is heard; and presently he enters in Günther's form, or at least as nearly in it as can be managed on the stage.
They give Siegfried a draught which takes away his memory; he falls in love with Gutruna, and when they propose that he should take Gunther's shape and win Brunnhilda for him, he agrees at once. In the meantime, Waltraute, a Valkyrie, knowing Wotan's need of the ring, has come and tried in vain to get it; Brunnhilda refuses to part with it.
The scene between Siegfried and Brünnhilda is more inspired; and the journey to the Rhine is one of Wagner's finest bits of picture-painting. The change of feeling towards the end is superb: a sense of foreboding and dread comes into the music and prepares us for the coming disaster. But when the curtain rises on the hall of the Gibichungs we at once get more artificiality and theatricality.
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