That drama opens in earnest with The Valkyrie—­the story of how, in pursuing his ambitious plan, Wotan is forced to sacrifice first his own son, then his daughter Brunnhilde, who is the incarnation of all that is sweet and beautiful in his own nature.  She shares, it is true, his curiously limited immortality—­an immortality that may be, and finally is, curtailed—­but she can suffer a punishment worse to her than extinction.  The prelude opens with the roar and hoarse scream of the storm as it dashes through the forest—–­ the plash of the rain, the flashing of lightning and the roll of the thunder.  The musical idea was obviously suggested by Schubert’s “Erl-king.”  In each we have the same rapidly-reiterated notes in the upper part, and Wagner’s bars are simply a variant of Schubert’s.  The curtain rises on Hunding’s hut; the door is burst open, and Siegmund tumbles in exhausted, and falls before the fire.  Sieglinda gives him mead, and one sees it is a case of love at first sight.  Hunding enters, and, finding Siegmund to be an enemy of his, gives him until morning, and tells him that then he must fight.  Sieglinda drugs her husband’s night-draught, and, while he is sleeping, tells Siegmund of how, when she was abducted, and compelled against her will to marry Hunding, a gray-bearded stranger came in, with his hat drawn over one eye—­Wotan had but one eye—­and wearing a dark-blue cloak marked with stars, suggested by the deep-blue star-pierced sky by night.  He drove a sword into the ash trunk, and, declaring that only a man strong enough to draw it out should wield it, went his way.  Many have tried, and none succeeded.  Siegmund at once draws it, and the pair fly.  There has been some of Wagner’s finest and freshest love-music, and one entrancing effect is got when a puff of wind suddenly blows the door open.  The storm has ceased, and there we see the forest bathed in a spring moonlight, the raindrops on the young leaves dancing and gleaming.  It is at this moment Siegmund sings the wonderful spring song.

In the next act Wotan tells Brunnhilda she must protect Siegmund in the coming fight; but Fricka seeks him out in this rocky place amongst the hills, and compels him to promise on oath that Siegmund shall die to atone for his violation of the sacred rite of marriage.  Brunnhilda reenters, and then occurs a scene which has caused much debate.  At enormous length Wotan recounts to her practically all we have already seen and heard before.  It may be, as I have said, that Wagner wanted to make each opera comprehensible in itself, without reference to the others; it may be that his artistic sense forced him to make it clearer and ever clearer that each tragedy as it happens is Wotan’s tragedy; but, in any case, I, for one, never regret when the scene is somewhat shorn.  Wotan is defeated in this attempt to observe the word of the law, but break the spirit.  He cannot wield the sword himself, but he made it and placed it where