The curse of the ring is at an end.  The ravens of Wotan, perching aloft, fly heavily off to announce the tidings in Walhalla, while Brunhilde, after seeing Siegfried’s body carefully deposited on the pyre with all his weapons, kindles the fire with her own hand.  Then, springing upon Grane, she rides into the very midst of the flames, which soon rise so high that they swallow her up and entirely hide her from the spectators’ sight.

After a short time the flames die down, the bright light fades, the stage darkens, and the river rises and overflows its banks, until its waves come dashing over the funeral pyre.  They bear upon their swelling crests the Rhine maidens who have come to recover their ring, Hagen, standing gloomily in the background, becomes suddenly aware of their intention, wildly flings his weapons aside, and rushes forward, crying, ’Unhand the ring!’ But he is caught in the twining arms of two of the Rhine maidens, who draw him down under the water, and drown him, while the third, having secured the Nibelung ring, returns in triumph on the ebbing waves to her native depths, chanting the Rhinegold strain.  As she disappears, a reddish glow like the Aurora Borealis appears in the sky.  It grows brighter and brighter, until one can discern the shining abode of Walhalla, enveloped in lurid flames from the burning world-ash, and in the centre the assembled gods calmly seated upon their thrones, to submit to their long predicted doom, the ’Goetterdaemmerung.’[3]

[3] See Prof.  G.T.  Dippold’s ‘Ring of the Nibelung.’

[Illustration:  Parsifal in the enchanted garden.]

PARSIFAL.

It was while he was searching for the material for Tannhaeuser, that Wagner came across Wolfram von Eschenbach’s poems of ‘Parsifal’ and ’Titurel,’[4] and, as he reports, ’an entirely new world of poetical matter suddenly opened before me.’  Wagner made no use of this idea, however, until 1857, some fifteen years later, when he drew up the first sketch of his Parsifal, during his residence at Zurich; twenty years later he finished the poem at Bayreuth.  He then immediately began the music, although he was sixty-five years of age.  That same year, while he was making a concert tour in London, he read the poem to a select audience of friends, by whose advice it was published.

Although the music for this opera, which is designated as ’a solemn work destined to hallow the stage,’ was finished in 1879, the instrumentation was completed only in 1882, at Palermo, a few months before its first production at Bayreuth.

This opera, which Wagner himself called a religious drama, is intended as the ’Song of Songs of Divine Love, as Tristan and Ysolde is the Song of Songs of Terrestrial Love.’  The performance was repeated sixteen times at Bayreuth, where many people had come from all parts of the world to hear and see it, and has since been revived a number of times.  It is the most difficult and least easily understood of the master’s intricate works, and bears the imprint not only of his philosophical studies, but also of the spirit of Oriental mysticism, in which he delighted, and which he at one time intended to make use of for the stage.