[[Listen]]
These motives accompany the action most expressively. Brünnhilde still hesitates to cast off for ever the supernatural characteristics of the Valkyr and give herself up entirely to Siegfried. The young hero's growing ecstasy finds expression in the Motive of Love's Joy. At last it awakens a responsive note of purely human passion in Brünnhilde and, answering the proud Siegfried Motive with the jubilant Shout of the Valkyrs and the ecstatic measures of Love's Passion, she proclaims herself his.
With a love duet—nothing puny and purring, but rapturous and proud—the music-drama comes to a close. Siegfried, a scion of the Wälsung race, has won Brünnhilde for his bride, and upon her finger has placed the ring fashioned of Rhinegold by Alberich in the caverns of Nibelheim, the abode of the Nibelungs. Clasping her in his arms and drawing her to his breast, he has felt her splendid physical being thrill with a passion wholly responsive to his. Will the gods be saved through them, or does the curse of Alberich still rest on the ring worn by Brünnhilde as a pledge of love?
GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG
DUSK OF THE GODS
Music-drama in a prologue and three acts, words and music by Richard Wagner. Produced, Bayreuth, August 17, 1876.
New York, Metropolitan Opera House, January 25, 1888, with Lehmann (Brünnhilde), Seidl-Kraus (Gutrune), Niemann (Siegfried), Robinson (Gunther), and Fischer (Hagen). Other performances at the Metropolitan Opera House have had, among others, Alvary and Jean de Reszke as Siegfried and Édouard de Reszke as Hagen.
Characters
| Siegfried | Tenor |
| Gunther | Baritone |
| Alberich | Baritone |
| Hagen | Bass |
| Brünnhilde | Soprano |
| Gutrune | Soprano |
| Waltraute | Mezzo-Soprano |
| First, Second, and Third Norn | Contralto, Mezzo-Soprano, and Soprano |
| Woglinde, Wellgunde, and Flosshilde | Sopranos and Mezzo-Soprano |