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There is likewise less need in the case of this opera than, I think, any other of Wagner's, to be familiar beforehand with the argument. Any one seeing the Rhine-gold unprepared would probably not understand anything whatever, as far as the story is concerned. The same is in some degree true of Walkuere and Goetterdaemmerung; even of Parsifal one need to know the inwardness of the plot.
Then she looked far away toward the valley and Siegfried. "This ring of mine is Siegfried's pledge of love!" The next morning Brunhilde stood upon Walkuere Rock and watched the glorious sunrise. Suddenly she heard the glad notes of Siegfried's silver horn. "Siegfried! Siegfried!" she cried in joy, and hurried down the mountain to greet him.
To bring the whole story of the fall of the ancient Germanic gods into a spectacular drama on the scale of the Ring was beyond even his mighty powers, and in Die Walkuere he is like a man trying to break away from the path which he has laid down for himself, to get rid of the cumbersome spectacular element and let the action develop itself naturally from within.
Never once did his courage falter; no thought of any concession, however small, however seemingly reasonable, which he held to be dishonourable to his art ever found a place in his mind. The surrender of Die Walkuere alone would probably have turned the tide in his favour, and he was pressed for it by most of the great theatres, but in vain.
Walkuere and Siegfried were continued in the same vein, and it is very significant that he broke off the composition and laid the work aside just at the monstrous dragon-fight. It is no strained conjecture that as the difficulties of his gigantic subject accumulated he at last realized the practical impossibility of what he had undertaken.
Anything but this! Never to see Valhalla? Never to ride with the Walkuere? Father! Father! Take back these words of doom!" Brunhilde's sisters began to plead for her. "Go!" he cried, "every one of you. Leave Brunhilde to me!" Frightened by great Wotan's awful wrath, they spurred their horses and dashed away to Valhalla. Slowly the storm clouds drifted away. The twilight came.
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