The scene of the third act is laid in a forest on the banks of the Rhine.  The three Rhine-maidens are disporting themselves in the river while they lament the loss of their beautiful treasure.  Siegfried, who has strayed from his companions in the chase, now appears, and they beg him for the ring upon his finger, at first with playful banter, and afterwards in sober earnest, warning him that if he does not give it back to them he will perish that very day.  He laughs at their womanly wiles, and they vanish as his comrades appear.  After the midday halt, Siegfried tells Gunther and his vassals the story of his life.  In the midst of his tale Hagen gives him a potion which restores his faded memory.  He tells the whole story of his discovery of Bruennhilde, and his marriage with her, to the horror of Gunther.  At the close of his tale two ravens, the birds of Wotan, fly over his head.  He turns to look at them, and Hagen plunges his spear into his back.  The vassals, in silent grief, raise the dead body upon their shields, and carry it back to the castle through the moonlit forest, to the immortal strains of the Funeral March.

At the castle Gutrune is anxiously waiting for news of her husband.  Hagen tells her that he has been slain by a boar.  The corpse is brought in and set down in the middle of the hall, amidst the wild lamentations of the widowed Gutrune.  Hagen claims the ring, and stabs Gunther, who tries to prevent his taking it; but as he grasps at it, Siegfried’s hand is raised threateningly, and Hagen sinks back abashed.  Bruennhilde now comes in, sorrowful but calm.  She understands the whole story of Siegfried’s unwitting treachery, and has pardoned him in his death.  She thrusts the weeping Gutrune aside, claiming for herself the sole right of a wife’s tears.  The vassals build a funeral pyre, and place the body of Siegfried upon it.  Bruennhilde takes the ring from his finger, and with her own hand fires the wood.  She then leaps upon her horse Grane, and with one bound rides into the towering flames.  The Rhine, which has overflowed its banks, now invades the hall.  Hagen dashes into the flood in search of the ring, but the Rhine-maidens have been before him.  Flosshilde, who has rescued the ring from the ashes of the pyre, holds it exultantly aloft, while Wellgunde and Woglinde drag Hagen down to the depths.  Meanwhile a ruddy glow has overspread the heavens behind.  Valhalla is burning, and the gods in calm resignation await their final annihilation.  The old order yields, giving place to the new.  The ancient heaven, sapped by the lust of gold, has crumbled, and a new world, founded upon self-sacrificing love, rises from its ashes to usher in the era of freedom.

‘Goetterdaemmerung’ is prevented by its portentous length from ever becoming popular to the same extent as Wagner’s other works, but it contains some of the noblest music he ever wrote.  The final scene, for sublimity of conception and grandeur of execution, remains unequalled in the whole series of his writings.  It fitly gathers together the many threads of that vast fabric, ‘Der Ring des Nibelungen.’  Saint Saens says of it that ’from the elevation of the last act of “Goetterdaemmerung,” the whole work appears, in its almost supernatural grandeur, like the chain of the Alps seen from the summit of Mont Blanc.’