Die Walküre

Act I

The orchestral prelude describes a violent storm. It starts to subside when the curtain rises and the inside of Hunding’s hut is revealed. Siegmund enters and, exhausted, throws himself down on a bearskin, where Sieglinde, Hunding’s wife, finds him. She brings him some water and, fascinated by Sieglinde’s countenance, he asks her where he is. “This home and this woman belong to Hunding”, she replies. Her husband has nothing to fear, he says, as he is unarmed and wounded. Sieglinde anxiously asks him to show her his wounds, but he allays her fears. His body is strong, he assures, and, if his shield and spear had held out half as well, he would never have fled from his enemies. But they were shattered and he was chased away.

Sieglinde brings him a horn of honeyed mead. While he is drinking, he feels increasingly attracted by her. But, afraid of bringing misfortune to her, he abruptly prepares to leave. “Who pursues you?” she asks. “Ill fate follows me wherever I go”, he responds, and heads towards the door. “Then, stay here”, she exclaims. “You cannot bring misfortune where misfortune dwells already”. Deeply moved, they look at each other for a long time. Hunding arrives and demands to know who the stranger is. She explains his difficult situation and Hunding brusquely offers hospitality to him. While Sieglinde is serving some food to both men, Hunding disgustedly and suspiciously perceives how alike the stranger and his wife look. He asks him what took him there and Siegmund evasively responds that he was driven by storms and stark need. What is your name, then? Hunding insists. As Sieglinde is also showing interest, Siegmund says that he should be called Wehwalt (Woeful), and describes how, one day, he returned from a hunt with his father, Wolfe, and found his house burnt down, his mother killed and his twin sister kidnapped. Siegmund goes on to tell how he lost trace of his father and how he has always found himself in conflict with society. On one occasion he went in aid of a young woman who was being forced into a loveless marriage, he continues. He killed her ruthless relatives, but after his spear and shield were snatched from him, he was no longer able to protect the woman. He saw her die in front of him and had to flee from the crowd. Hunding realises that the men who were attacked by Siegmund were his own relatives and that he is lodging his enemy in his own home. Hospitality laws oblige him to give him shelter overnight, but he will have to fight for his life in the morning.

While she is preparing Hunding’s night drink, Sieglinde adds a sleep-inducing drug. She leaves the room looking yearningly at Siegmund and glancing at a spot in the trunk of the ash tree around which the room has been built. Siegmund, alone now, broods over the feverish excitement that Sieglinde has caused him and about his state of helplessness, adding that his father once promised that he would find a sword at the time of greatest need. The light of the fire reveals the place in the tree trunk where the hilt of a sword buried into the wood can be seen.

Sieglinde returns and says that, during her wedding to Hunding, a stranger dressed in grey, with a hat lowered over one eye, interrupted the feast and plunged a sword into the trunk of the tree. Not even the strongest men were able to move it an inch. Passionately embracing Sieglinde, Siegmund exclaims that both the sword and she herself will be his: Sieglinde is all that he has ever sought. Suddenly, the main door opens wide, revealing a glorious spring night with a full moon. Siegmund talks about spring and about love as brother and sister, and Sieglinde responds that he is the spring she has been longing for. The rest of the act is an ecstatic declaration of love between the two of them. He admits that Wehwalt is no longer an appropriate name. She then names him Siegmund (“Guardian of Victory») and, to the young lady’s delight, he effortlessly draws the sword from the tree. She says that he has won both the sister and the bride with the sword. They embrace with enthusiasm and the curtain, at least in traditional productions, falls rapidly so that no one can see what everyone can imagine they will do now.

Act II

On a steep rocky mountain ridge, Wotan orders her daughter Brünnhilde (the Valkyrie the work is titled after) to make sure that Siegmund wins the battle against Hunding. She takes delight in her Valkyrie sisters’ war cry, but warns her father that he has another battle in hand: his wife, Fricka, is furiously approaching in a ram-drawn chariot. Brünnhilde disappears and Fricka makes an entrance, in anger but with dignity. As the guardian of wedlock, Hunding has resorted to her to punish the adulterous couple of the Volsung twins. Wotan asks what they have done wrong: they are just united by love. Fricka complains that they have failed to fulfil the vows of marriage and he responds that he feels no respect for any vows that bind a loveless union.

Fricka aims her attack at the incestuous nature of the twins’ relationship and wants to know if he does not care about the values that keep the gods united. Gods need a hero –Wotan replies– free from their protection and able to do what they cannot do themselves. If Siegmund does not need protection, then take the sword from him, Fricka bursts out. Wotan’s weak insistence that Siegmund won it himself at a time when he most needed it is refuted by Fricka’s observation that it was him who created Siegmund’s need when he provided him with the sword. She makes him promise that neither he nor his Valkyrie daughter will protect Siegmund in his next battle. Brünnhilde’s war cry is heard when she approaches and Wotan, forced to accept the strength of Fricka’s arguments, totally desperate, makes an oath.

Alone with his daughter, Wotan gives free rein to his anger and his shame. Brünnhilde asks him to confide in her. He doubts, because he thinks it may be a sign of weakness, but when Brünnhilde suggests that when he speaks to her he is actually speaking to his own will, he gives in and embarks on his great narration. He starts describing how, when the pleasures of youthful love began to wane, he started to crave for power. He dominated the world but, throughout the process, he became bound by various contracts. While he was starting to long for love again, Alberich, the Nibelung dwarf, renounced love in order to gain the Gold of the Rhine. The ring he forged with it was stolen by Wotan himself, but instead of giving it back to the Rhine’s daughters, he used it to bribe the giants.

Then, he visited Erda, the source of ancestral wisdom, in the bowels of the earth. He learnt her secrets and she gave birth to Brünnhilde, who was brought up with her eight Valkyrie sisters (although they don’t seem to be Erda’s daughters); together, they bring the heroes who die on the battlefield to serve Wotan in Valhalla. Wotan thinks that these heroes will protect him from the warriors that Alberich is gathering, but the ring must stay away from him at all costs. Therefore, Wotan wishes to urgently recover the ring from its current holder, the giant Fafner, who has turned into a dragon to better protect his treasure. However, Wotan knows that his strength would fail if he attacked Fafner, due to the contract he signed with him in the past. That’s why he needs a special hero who can act as a free agent but fight for the same aims. Isn’t Siegmund, the Volsung, this hero? asks Brünnhilde. Fricka saw through that deceit, Wotan replies. He must now surrender what he loves best; he only longs for all his suffering to end. He has heard that Alberich has had a son: “What I have loathed may he inherit”, Wotan declares bitterly. Brünnhilde must not protect Siegmund in the next battle, but Hunding. She tries to make him change his mind, but he is inflexible and threatens her with the most severe punishment if she disobeys.

Siegmund and Sieglinde enter breathing heavily. Wracked with guilt, she begs him to abandon her, but he just swears to avenge all the harm done to her by killing Hunding. Horns can be heard in the forest and Sieglinde, feverishly imagining Hunding’s dogs tearing at Siegmund’s flesh, falls into a faint.

Then, there is a scene of paramount importance in the tetralogy: the Annunciation of Death. Brünnhilde appears and announces Siegmund that he must follow her to Valhalla. There he will not only find the great War Father (Wotan), but also his own father, and will be served by Wish Maidens. When he learns that he cannot take his sister and wife with him, Siegmund decides not to go to Valhalla. Brünnhilde tells him that his fate cannot be changed. She is extremely distressed about the obvious devotion he feels for Sieglinde and when he threatens to kill her rather than separate from her, Brünnhilde gives in and promises to protect Siegmund, thus defying Wotan’s order. Siegmund bends lovingly over Sieglinde, who is asleep. Hunding’s horn is heard and, in the subsequent fight, Brünnhilde tries to protect Siegmund with her shield, but Wotan appears and breaks Siegmund’s sword with his spear. Hunding kills Siegmund, but Wotan kills him in turn in a gesture of bitter rage. Wotan then sets out in search of Brünnhilde.

Act III

In the Prelude and the Ride of the Valkyries, the warrior maidens gather at the top of a rocky mountain to take their heroes to Valhalla. They realise that Brünnhilde is missing, but they finally see her taking not a hero but a woman on her saddle. Brünnhilde begs her sisters to protect both her and Sieglinde –whom she has rescued from the battlefield– from Wotan’s wrath. None of her sisters wants to run the risk of helping her. Sieglinde wishes to die, but when she is told that a Volsung stirs in her womb, she begs Brünnhilde to protect her. They urge her to flee to the forest and give her the fragments of Siegmund’s sword, with which one day her son will forge a new weapon.

Wotan breaks in, furious, and the Valkyries try to protect Brünnhilde from his wrath. He despises their weak spirit and tells them about their sister’s “crime” of disloyalty and disobedience. Brünnhilde comes to receive her punishment and she is informed that she can no longer be a Valkyrie; moreover, she will be held in sleep at the top of the mountain, prey to the first man who finds her. The Valkyries protest in horror, but, under threat of receiving the same punishment if they dare intervene, they separate and disperse.

Alone with Wotan, Brünnhilde begs him to be merciful to his favourite daughter. She tells him that the Volsung touched her heart and she decided to protect him, knowing that this was Wotan’s most intimate desire. He turns a deaf ear to her pleas and gets angry when he recalls the Volsungs. He intends to leave her lying on the rock, to be claimed by the first man who finds her. Brünnhilde begs to be spared at least the disgrace of an ignoble union: she requests to be surrounded by a circle of fire that discourages everyone except the bravest of heroes. Deeply moved, Wotan raises Brünnhilde from her knees and embraces her. He sings passionately about the inspiration of her glittering eyes and, laying her on a rock, kisses them to close them. Then he calls Loge and indicates him with his spear where he must light the fire around the rock. Wotan leaves the place in sorrow.

Luis Gago

He is an editor and music critic for El País and co-director of the Chamber Music Festival of the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn. He usually prepares the subtitles in Spanish for the Royal Opera House, the English National Opera and the Digital Concert Hall of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.