Götterdämmerung at Nationaltheater Mannheim

The Norns tell of Wotan's destruction of the world and ash from the destruction of his spear and the contracts by Siegfried. Valhalla awaits Götterdämmerung. The Nornenseil tears, her "eternal knowledge" is at an end. Siegfried leaves Brünnhilde for new deeds and passing it as a pledge of his love of the captured Fafner ring. At the court of Gibichungen has chosen a man for his half-sister Gutrune and Brünnhilde as wife for his half-brother Gunther Alberich's son Hagen Siegfried. Siegfried forget Brünnhilde By a potion and conquered by force for him in Gunther's shape. Hagen wants to come into the possession of the ring and kills Siegfried using the betrayed Brünnhilde. Dying remembers Siegfried her. Also Gunther is killed by Hagen in the dispute over the ring. Brünnhilde, however, plunges into the flames of Siegfried's funeral pyre, giving the Rhine maidens the Ring back to solve Alberich's curse. Hagen is engulfed by the floods, and the gods Valhalla goes up in flames.

Götterdämmerung unites the beginning and conclusion of Wagner's tetralogy. The resulting 1848 still at the beginning of the formation of the whole work as Siegfried's Death Text seal disconnect more than 20 years of its realization in composition (1869, 1874). This results in an opposing tension between textual and musical form of the work: While the plot still carries conventionally operatic trains, unfolds the complex musical style late Wagner, the pioneering compositional achievements of his musical-dramatic vision.