United States or Marshall Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Remorse, indeed, has assailed her, but not for having followed the "luminous brother." It is for having ever belonged to Hunding, whom she neither loved nor was loved by. The new sentiment of love so completely possessing her places her former union in the light of unspeakable pollution, and she adjures the "noble one" to depart from the accursed who brings him such a dowry of shame.
Meantime Thorhild, wife of Hunding, King of the Swedes, possessed with a boundless hatred for her stepsons Ragnar and Thorwald, and fain to entangle them in divers perils, at last made them the king's shepherds. But Swanhwid, daughter of Hadding, wished to arrest by woman's wit the ruin of natures so noble; and taking her sisters to serve as retinue, journeyed to Sweden.
Slowly the red light fades; "Go, tell Fricka I have sent you," Wotan says bitterly, and at his nod Hunding falls dead; Brünnhilda has run round, picked up the shards of the Sword, and, gathering Sieglinda in her arms, rushed away.
Hunding is characterised more clearly and with more decisive strokes than Hagen in the last opera of the Ring, partly because there is more genuine inspiration in the Valkyrie, partly, perhaps, because Hunding is a much simpler personage.
It is his sister's house to which fate has led him, where, ill-starred and unhappy like himself, this other child of Wälse's lives, in subjection to Hunding, her lord, who has come by her through some obscure commerce, and to whom she is no more than part of the household baggage.
I lingered in thought for a minute, then turned me to ride up higher, And as a man most wary up over the bent I rode, And nigh hid peered o'er the hill-crest adown on the Hunding abode; And forsooth 'twas the fire wavering all o'er the roof of old, And all in the garth and about it lay the bodies of the bold; And bound to a rope amidmost were the women fair and young, And youths and little children, like the fish on a withy strung As they lie on the grass for the angler before the beginning of night.
With this 'Die Walküre' opens. A violent storm is raging when Siegmund reaches Hunding's hut. Exhausted by fatigue, he throws himself down by the hearth, and is soon fast asleep. Sieglinde entering offers him food and drink. Soon Hunding appears, and, after hearing his guest's name and history, discovers in him a mortal foe. Nevertheless the rights of hospitality are sacred.
The terror and excitement of the second act are vastly increased by the storm of thunder and lightning that rages while Siegmund and Hunding fight.
With the son he himself leads the life of a wolf, and teaches him the only power a god can teach, the power of doing without happiness. When he has given him this terrible training, he abandons him, and goes to the bridal feast of his daughter Sieglinda and Hunding.
Amid the gathering storm-clouds the two men meet upon a rocky ridge. Brünnhilde protects Siegmund with her shield, but just as he is about to deal Hunding a fatal blow, Wotan appears in thunder and lightning and thrusts his spear between the combatants. Siegmund's sword is shivered to fragments upon it, and Hunding strikes him dead.
Word Of The Day