Like the First Act, the Third begins with a storm of rain, wind, thunder and lightning; like First and Second, it opens with a display of energy before which all listeners are as leaves in the wind.  As panoramic displays translated into music all the three introductions are likely enough to be misunderstood; so at the outset let us carefully bear in mind Wagner’s intention at the beginning of the last Act of the Valkyrie—­to show, with unequalled force and splendour, the strength of the god, soon to be shown as nothing before the strength of Bruennhilda.  Bruennhilda, let us always remember, stands for human love, affection—­not love in the Tristan sense—­but that love of which Goldsmith sang that He “loved us into being”; the love of human being for human being so strong that not for so many thousands a year as a judge, so many pitiable hundreds a year as a magistrate, immortality as an omnipotent ruler or a Wotan, will it perpetuate or permit a wrong on a human being.  To win omnipotence Wotan has inflicted wrong upon wrong—­wrong upon wrong on those he had created for his purpose, on those the fine part of his nature loved.  The fine part of his nature revolts and conquers him.  He struggles on, shorn of nine-tenths of his strength, and it is not until the Third Act of Siegfried that he sees himself beaten and acknowledges it; but the ending of the gods, which really began with Wotan’s first grasp at universal power, is first in this last Act of the Valkyrie clearly foretold.  Wotan comes on clothed in thunders and lightnings to punish Bruennhilda because she fought on the side of the higher instead of the lower part of his nature—­his higher self is cast from him, only (he thinks) to unite later with a force (a hero) independent of him to gain him his sovereignty.

The tempest rages and roars; the Valkyries arrive “by ones, by twos, by threes,” at the Valkyries’ Rock; and presently, in hotter haste than the rest, Bruennhilda comes in, bringing Sieglinda.  She tells her (Bruennhilda’s) sisters how she has defied Wotan, the All-father; they are scandalised, and desert her; Sieglinda feebly begs her to take no more trouble—­there is nothing left to live for; Bruennhilda tells her she carries within her the seed of the highest hero of all the world; Sieglinda is filled with joy, revives, and flies to the cave in the wood where Siegfried is destined to be born.  Wotan comes on with his thunders and lightnings and calls for Bruennhilda; at last she answers, and he announces her punishment:  she shall be deprived of her godhood and left on the mountains to become the wife and slave of the first man that passes.  The other maidens wail in protest; in anger he bids them begone; Bruennhilda, overcome with shame, sinks at his feet.  The storm slowly dies away; Bruennhilda rises and pleads her cause—­“Is this crime of mine so shameful?—­in protecting Siegmund the Volsung I simply followed what I knew to be the dictates of your own innermost heart.”