"Siegfried in the Woods," by Reinhold Max Eichler, 1900.
It was in the middle of composing Siegfried, in 1857, that Wagner made the momentous decision to set the Ring aside and pursue other projects for a time. First came the avant-garde monument of Tristan, which was supposed at first to be a simpler, more popular, more profitable opera; then came Die Meistersinger, a comedy that also grew to gigantic proportions. Only in the late 1860s did Wagner finally return to Siegfried and the remainder of the Ring. Wagnerians have debated ever since whether the opera itself had something to do with this temporary stalling of the project. Of the four operas in Ring, it is the least psychologically complex, the least freighted with grander themes. It contains surefire action sequences involving the reforging of Nothung and the defeat of the dragon, but the title character is of limited interest. Wagner once called him a "stupid boy," though he compared the youthful version of Siegfried favorably to the grown man of Götterdämmerung, whom he called "awful." The atmosphere of the work changes markedly, though, with the entrance of Brünnhilde in Act III.
In Act I of Siegfried, the young hero sharing a forest cave with Mime, brother of the defeated dwarf lord Alberich. Not far off is the lair of Fafner, the giant who took possession of the Ring toward the end of Rheingold. Using the magical Tarnhelm, Fafner has changed himself into a fearsome dragon. Mime has been bringing up Siegfried in the woods, his mother Sieglinde having died in childbirth. His plan, in service to Alberich's grand scheme of revenge, is to train Siegfried kill Fafner, then to dispose of Siegfried and take the Ring. The hero enters and mocks Mime's attempts to forge an unbreakable sword. Dialogue about Siegfried's parentage follows, whereupon Mime brings out the pieces of Siegmund's broken sword Nothung. Siegfried tells Mime that this mighty sword must be reforged and leaves the dwarf to figure out how this should be done. Left alone, Mime receives a visit from a cloaked, hatted Wanderer, who turns out to be Wotan in disguise. A game of riddles ensues: Mime fails the third question, about who can reforge the sword. Only one who has never known fear, the Wanderer reveals. Siegfried returns from forest wanderings and impatiently takes hold the fragments. As he sings the forging song — "Nothung! Nothung!" (1:07:09) — he restores the blade to its primal power.
At the beginning of Act II, another visitor from the Ring past looks in: Alberich, who has been monitoring his brother's Siegfried-Fafner project. The Wanderer also reappears, and the cycle's power-hungry antipodes conduct a charged dialogue. Alberich, who has no trouble seeing through Wotan's disguise, taunts him with the fact that the age of the gods is drawing to a close. Wotan, in response, adopts an ironic, philosophical manner, claiming that he does not care what happens to the Ring or to Siegfried. He proceeds to wake Fafner, encouraging Alberich to try to get the Ring back by reasoned argument: an unassailable hero is on his way, to whom Fafner is sure to fall. The dragon finds the proposition absurd. In the next scene, Mime and Siegfried discuss strategies for killing Fafner, after which the hero goes alone into the woods, where the famous Forest Murmurs music is playing (30:56). A Woodbird is singing an intriguing song, and Siegfried tries to imitate it on his horn. Fafner awakens, issues portentous threats, and goes to his doom. Happening to taste the dragon's blood on his finger, Siegfried finds that he can now understand the Woodbird, who possesses three pieces of very useful information: the Ring and Tarnhelm should be taken from the hoard; Mime has murderous intent; and a glorious maiden lies within a ring of fire. Siegfried promptly kills Mime and goes in search of the fiery maiden. Alberich, who had been arguing with Mime just before the empowered hero emerged from the dragon's cave, remains alive, but is defeated once again.
Act III opens with the Wanderer in the vicinity of Brünnhilde's rock. He summons the earth-goddess Erda for a last conversation, which serves mainly to refresh the audience's memory of the events of Walküre and to affirm Wotan's determination to go willingly to his end. Erda is confused by this performance and sinks from sight. The sword-bearing Siegfried enters and arrogantly banters with the Wanderer. When, contrary to his interests, the Wanderer bars the hero's way, Siegfried performs the epochal act of shattering the god's spear (29:30). Notably, the spear motif is dislodged from tonal harmony as it breaks, its downward steps broaden into whole tones rather than the alternating semitones and whole tones of a standard scale. Here again a comparison of the early and later stages of the motif.
Siegfried breaks through the Ring of Fire and finds himself at the mountain's summit. A unison line in the violins that climbs from lowest G to the high upper register (34:27) is a magical evocation of drifting haze lit up by the sun. The only accompaniment from the rest of the orchestra is a brief intonation of the motif of fate in the horns. the slumbering Brünnhilde, who, covered in armor, at first appears to be a man. Once he has taken the armor away, he makes a discovery that did not go unnoticed by early psychoanalysts (see Chapter 7 of Wagnerism): "Das ist kein Mann!" ("This is no man!"). Brünnhilde's awakening is another majestic sequence — a sign of Wagner's supercharged invention in the wake of Tristan experience. At 46:29, an oboe imitates the violins' climbing line, leading to a mighty surge of full orchestra, a gigantic B dominant-seventh chord, a piercing E-minor chord, and, finally, sumptuous, harp-speckled C major. At 49:31, the E-minor/C-major shift repeats, with Brünnhilde singing "Heil dir, Sonne!" A passionate and not uncomplicated dialogue between hero and heroine ensues. When Siegfried makes too sudden and violent a move, Brünnhilde repels him (1:03:40), uttering the line "He who woke me wounded me," which long haunted Nietzsche. In her confusion, the Valkyrie falls back on the music of her father's ultimate despair — "O heilige Schmach," from Walküre (1:06:14) — and then finds her way to an acceptance of the mission she will undertake through her love for Siegfried: the fall of the gods.
In the final minutes a frenzied duet begins — a familiar operatic artifice that Wagner had avoided earlier in the Ring, on the principle that in real life people do not speak simultaneously. The regression here has an electrifying effect, with an almost demonically laughing Brünnhilde extemporizing on her Valkyrie music and throwing out phrases such as "Götterdämmerung" and "Nacht der Vernichtung" ("night of annihilation"). She has taken charge of the drama, and the opera comes to a brilliant, apocalyptic close. Here are Astrid Varnay and Bernd Aldenhoff live at Bayreuth in 1951, with Herbert von Karajan conducting:
