Here Gutrune awaits her lord, anxious at his long absence. Fearing Brunnhilde, she has listened at her door, and found the apartment empty, for the unhappy woman is watching for Siegfried on the river bank. Preceded by Hagen, the corpse is brought into the hall and Gutrune giving herself up to measureless grief, refuses credence to the story that her husband was killed by a boar. Then Hagen boldly acknowledges his dark deed and as Gunther moves to take the ring from Siegfried's finger, Hagen attacks him and kills him too. When he in turn snatches at the gold the dead man's hand is threateningly raised and Hagen falls back in dismay.
Now Brunnhilde advances. She understands at last that Siegfried would have been true but for the draught of forgetfulness. Half pitying, she bids Gutrune remem ber that none but she was Siegfried's lawful wife. Gutrune, filled with shame that she may not mourn over him who was another's husband, creeps over to the dead body of her brother and remains weeping there.
After a long contemplation of Siegfried's face, Brunn hilde gives command to the people to erect a funeral-pyre upon the river bank. As they engage in their gloomy task, she draws the ring from Siegfried's finger and places it upon her own. The body is borne to the pyre and she herself flings the brand into the pile, while Wotan's ravens circle above. Then leaping upon her horse, Grane, she rides with a bound into the fire. The flames tower high and threaten the hall but the swelling river rises mightily to quench them, and on the highest wave are seen the Rhine Daughters. Hagen plunges into the flood to seize
the gold he covets, but NVoglinde and Wellgrunde drag him beneath the water, while Flosshilde, who has recovered the ring from the ashes of Brunnhilde on the pyre, holds it triumphantly aloft. Now a ruddy glow illumines the heavens and Walhalla is seen burning in the sky, while Wotan and his gods and heroes sit calmly waiting their annihilation. It is the passing of the old order and the coming of the new, for the world has been redeemed front its curse by self-sacrificing human love.
Some of the noblest of Wagner's music is contained in " The Dusk of the Gods." " Siegfried's Rhine Journey," an orchestral interlude between the prologue and Act I pictures the journey of the hero from the Valkyrie rock to the hall of the Gibichungs. The appeal of the Rhine Daughters to Siegfried is of supreme beauty, as is also the hero's story of his adventures, in which recur all the motives of the " Siegfried " division of the trilogy, i. e., the sword melody, the storm, the notes of the wood-bird, Mimi's blan dishments, the rustle and snap of flames and the triumph of Brunnhilde's awakening. The magnificent funeral march telling in motives the story of Siegfried's life and forming the most impressive orchestral lament ever penned and the superb closing scene of Brunnhilde's immolation are among the mighty moments in this mightiest of music-drama creations.