Götterdämmerung

Third Day in Three Acts
Music and Libretto by Richard Wagner

The Ring of the Nibelung, Day Three. For the gods, the hour has come, well the three Norns, the weavers of destiny daughters of Erda, the Earth, know it. Alberich’s greed and lividity, however, also poison the world of men, driving his son Hagen to plot against Siegfried. A magic potion makes the love forgotten and betrayed: now the hero covets the hand of Gutrune, Hagen’s half-sister and Gunther’s sister, to whom he promises to deliver Brünnhilde herself as his bride. He will remember her again, but dying, shot in the back by Hagen. The hero is extinguished, the dreamed age of heroes is extinguished. Not extinguished is the lust for the Ring, which kills both Gunther and Hagen. The cursed treasure will be purified by Brünnhilde at Siegfried’s funeral pyre. As the flames burn down the Walhall, home of the gods, the gentle waters of the Rhine, overflowing, find their treasure. The cycle is completed and with it the Wagnerian enterprise of making opera a metaphor for the world through myth.