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Siegfried comes, takes the ring, and Brunhild is now brought to the Rhine castle of the Gibichungs, but Siegfried under the spell does not love her. She is to be wedded to Gunther. She rises in wrath and denounces Siegfried. But at a hunting banquet Siegfried is given another magic draught, remembers all, and is slain by Hagan by a blow in the back, as he calls on Brunhild's name in love.
The colours of the scenery are likewise as intolerably German as ever the greens coarse and rank, the yellows bilious, the blues tinged with a sickly green, the reds as violent as the dress of the average German frau. On the other hand, many of the effects are wonderful the mountain gorge where Wotan calls up Erda, Mime's cave, the depths of the Rhine, the burning of the hall of the Gibichungs.
We now understand the new tramping strain. We are in the Rhineside hall of the Gibichungs, in the presence of King Gunther, his sister Gutrune, and Gunther's grim half brother Hagen, the villain of the piece. Gunther is a fool, and has for Hagen's intelligence the respect a fool always has for the brains of a scoundrel.
The other hunters arrive, and Siegfried, drinking the second philtre, tells the story of how he first won Brunnhilda. That is Hagen's opportunity: to avenge Gunther he stabs Siegfried in the back. To the tremendous funeral march the body is carried over the hills. It is brought into the hall of the Gibichungs.
As for the draught of forgetfulness itself, it cannot be explained as symbolical of anything; it must be accepted as we accept the Tarnhelm and the Rhinemaidens and black Alberich. In the Second Act the scene is again the Gibichungs' hall.
But Hagen points out that since Siegfried is riding about in quest of adventures, he will certainly pay an early visit to the renowned chief of the Gibichungs. They can then give him a philtre which will make him fall in love with Gutrune and forget every other woman he has yet seen.
In the last scene Siegfried's body is borne back to the hall of the Gibichungs amid loud lamenting. When Gutrune learns what has occurred, she bitterly curses Hagen and throws herself on Siegfried's corpse. Hagen and Gunter quarrel for the possession of the ring, and Gunter is slain; but when Hagen tries to take the ring, the hand of the dead hero is raised in warning.
She gives him her shield and Grane, her horse, and he in turn gives her his ring, as a pledge of his love and constancy. He hastens down the side of the mountain, and the note of his horn sounds fainter and fainter as he takes his way across the Rhine. The first act shows the hall of the castle of the Gibichungs near the Rhine.
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.
She is sending him to do heroic deeds, quite in the spirit of medieval chivalry; he presents her with the ring and goes, wearing her armour and taking her horse. He arrives at the hall of Gibichungs, where he finds Gunther, his sister Gutruna and Hagen, a son of Alberich.
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