With the help of Pedrillo, who manages to intoxicate Osmin, they try to escape, but Osmin overtakes them and brings them back to the Pasha, who at once orders that they be brought before him.—Constanza, advancing with noble courage, explains that the pretended artist is her lover, and that she will rather die with him than leave him. Selim Pasha, overwhelmed by this discovery, retires to think about what he shall do and his prisoners prepare for death, Belmonte and Constanza with renewed tender protestations of love, Pedrillo and Bionda without either fear or trembling.
Great is their happiness and Osmin's wrath, when the noble Pasha, touched by their constancy, sets them free, and asks for their friendship, bidding them remember him kindly after their return into their own country.
SIEGFRIED.
Second day of the Nibelungen Ring by WAGNER.
Musical Drama in three acts.
The first act represents a part of the forest, where Fafner guards the Rhinegold and where Sieglinda has found refuge. We find her son Siegfried,—to whom when she was dying, she gave birth—in the rocky cave of Mime the Nibelung, (brother of Alberich), who has brought up the child as his own, knowing that he is destined to slay Fafner and to gain the ring, which he covets for himself. Siegfried, the brave and innocent boy, instinctively shrinks from this father, who is so ugly, so mean and vulgar, while he has a deep longing for his dead mother, whom he never knew. He gives vent to these feelings in impatient questions about her. The dwarf answers unwillingly and gives him the broken pieces of the old sword Nothung (needful), which his mother left as the only precious remembrance of Siegfried's father.
Siegfried asks Mime to forge the fragments afresh, while he rushes away into the woods.
During his absence Wotan comes to Mime in the guise of a wanderer. Mime, though he knows him not, fears him and would fain drive him away. Finally he puts three questions to his guest. The first is the name of the race, which lives in earth's deepest depths, the second the name of those, who live on earth's back and the third, that of those, who live above the clouds. Of course Wotan answers them all, redeeming his head and shelter thereby; but now it is his turn to put three questions. He first asks what race it is, that Wotan loves most, though he dealt hardly with them, and Mime answers rightly, that they are the Waelsungs, whose son Siegfried is; then Wotan asks after the sword, which is to make Siegfried victorious. Mime joyously names "Nothung", but when Wotan asks him, who is to unite the pieces, he is in great embarrassment, for he remembers his task and perceives too late, what question he ought to have asked. Wotan leaves him, telling him that only that man can forge it, who never knew fear. Siegfried, finding the sword still in fragments when he returns, melts these in fire, and easily forges them together, to Mime's great awe, for he sees now that this boy is the one, whom the stranger has meant.
In the second scene we see the opening of Fafner's cavern, where Alberich keeps watch for the dragon's slayer, so long predicted.