because I can only
repeat what I have said before. Of course all the consummate skill of
the master is there.

The Third Act opens by the river-side. Siegfried has wandered away
from a hunting party, and is attracted by the song of the
Rhinemaidens--a regular set piece in the oldest-fashioned of forms,
but marvellously beautiful. The nymphs try to coax him to throw them
the Ring, which he had wrested from Bruennhilda; he refuses, and they
tell him that this day he must die. The other hunters come in, and
Siegfried is asked to tell of his adventures, and as he does so Hagen
offers him a cup of wine into which he dropped another powder;
Siegfried's memory gradually returns, and to Guenther's horror he
relates how he first scaled the mountain, passed the fire and won
Bruennhilda. He means on the first occasion, but it shames Guenther once
again. Hagen points in the air and asks Siegfried what he sees above
him; two black ravens fly over. Siegfried turns to look at them, and
Hagen instantly thrusts a spear into his back; the ravens wing their
way to Valhalla to tell Wotan that the fatal hour has come. In a
sublime passage Siegfried the dying hero sings of Bruennhilda, and
dies. Every one save Hagen is horror-stricken; the body is picked up
and carried downward through the moonlit mists over the mountain, and
the gorgeous funeral march is played. This is built up on Wagner's
customary plan: it tells the story of the Volsung race, now ended by
the death of Siegfried.

In the second scene of the Act there is one fine passage--Bruennhilda's
long address--and the rest is manufactured with dexterity and quite
uninspired. The body is brought in; Hagen wishes to take the Ring, and
a thrill is sent through us as the dead man's arm rises threateningly.
Guenther interferes, and Hagen kills him; Bruennhilda comes on and sees
clearly everything; Gutruna claims Siegfried as hers--"he never was
yours; he is mine," Bruennhilda replies, and (by trick of true
stage-craft) Gutruna is seen to kneel down by the side of her dead
brother. She is absolutely alone--even Siegfried, dead, is taken from
her, and she instinctively creeps to the only thing that is in any
sense hers. Bruennhilda orders the funeral fire to be built; the body
is put on it and consumed: Bruennhilda mounts Grani and scatters the
ashes, and with them the Ring, into the river; the waters rise, and
Hagen rushes after the Ring, to be drawn down; Wotan's power went when
the s