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Siegfried Page 1
Siegfried
Music drama in three acts
Music composed by Richard Wagner
Drama written by RIchard Wagner
Premiere: Bayreuth Festspielhaus,
August 1876
Siegfried is the third music drama in the cycle, The
Ring of the Nibelung , “Der Ring des Nibelungen.”
Adapted from the
Opera Journeys Lecture Series
by
Burton D. Fisher
Principal Characters in Siegfried Page 2
Story Synopsis and Overview Page 2
Story Narrative with Music Highlights Page 6
Opera Journeys Mini Guide Series
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Principal Characters in Siegfried
Siegfried
Tenor
Mime
Tenor
Brünnhilde
Soprano
The Wanderer (Wotan)
Bass-baritone
Fafner (Dragon)
Bass
Alberich
Baritone
Erda
Contralto
The Woodbird
Soprano
Story Synopsis and Overview
The events in Siegfried occur about seventeen
years after Brünnhilde entered her eternal sleep at the
end of The Valkyrie. The birth of the noble hero,
Siegfried, was solemnly foretold in The Valkyrie when
Brünnhilde proclaimed to Sieglinde, Den hehrsten
Helden der Welt hegst du, or Weib, im schirmenden
Schoos! , “You carry in your womb the noblest hero in
the world.” In the Ring, the her’s purpose is to
implement a transformation; as an unwitting surrogate
of Wotan it is anticipated that through his great qualities
and achievements he will redeem the world by purifying
the Ring of its Curse and returning it to the Rhine;
ultimately his defeat of evil forces will bring into
existence a new order of noble moral ideals and
elevated conscience.
After The Rhinegold, Mime had left the Nibelheim
and set up his forge in the forest near Niedhöle where
Fafner has become transformed by the Tarnhelm into
a ferocious Dragon. The future hero’s mother, Sieglinde,
had escaped Wotan’s wrath, and was led to Mime’s
cave where she was provided food and shelter. The
Dwarf helped Sieglinde deliver Siegfried and she died
immediately after childbirth. Mime raised the young
hero as his own son but kept him ignorant of his
background; his sole purpose was to nurture Siegfried’s
strength to the boy a fearless instrument against Fafner
and ultimately capture the treasure.
In Siegfried , Wagner addressed the archetypal
conflict of the child learning fear, adapting elements
from Grimm’s early 19th century fairy tale. “The Story
of a Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was.”
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As the music drama unfolds, the maturing young
Siegfried is an uninhibited, natural young man; the
idealized noble savage unencumbered and uncorrupted
by the trappings of civilization. Siegfried begins in the
darkness of Mime’s cave and ends in the brilliance of
the sky, symbolically the hero’s transformation to
maturity, consciousness and awareness, all of which
are ultimately cultivated to their utmost through the
powerful love between Brünnhilde and Siegfried.
Emotionally, Siegfried is a child who displays a
combination of admirable as well as objectionable
characteristics: he is a lonely boy who is psychologically
maturing and desperately yearning for companionship
and maternal love; he can be gentle and sensitive. But
in his pursuit of understanding the incomprehensible
world surrounding him, he can become deeply troubled,
at times confused and frustrated, as well as uncertain
and insecure. Mime sheltered him from the world,
preposterously claiming to be both his father and mother,
but the boy learned the facts of life in the forest and
realized that Mime lied to him. Nevertheless, the young
Siegfried is trapped in Mime’s world, and the malevolent
Dwarf represents his only road to wisdom and
knowledge.
Siegfried displays an exuberant love of life and
freedom, an eagerness for adventure, and a profound
sense of purpose and resolution. Yet his boisterous
adolescence and youthful vitality can erupt into impetuos
explosions of nastiness and sadism; he terrifies the
weaker Mime by bringing a bear into the cave, gloating
with pleasure as Mime shakes in fear.
Mime is by no means a kindly old Dwarf, but rather,
a treacherous, despicable, murderous villain; he fostered
Siegfried for the sole purpose of slaying the Dragon
and seizing the Ring and Hoard for himself. And
afterwards, he unabashedly planned to murder the boy.
But Siegfried hates Mime for seemingly repugnant
reasons; he saw his own image reflected in the stream
and views Mime as an ugly toad, hating him because
of his inferior features.
Wagner described his conception of Mime in his
stage directions for the unproduced Young Siegfried:
“He is small and bent, somewhat deformed and
bobbling. His head is abnormally large, his face a dark
ashen color and wrinkled, his eyes small and piercing,
with red rims, his gray beard long and scrubby, his head
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bald and covered with a red cap. He wears a dark grey
smock with a broad belt about his loins: feet bare,
with thick coarse soles underneath. There must be
nothing approaching caricature in all this: his
aspect, when he is quiet, must simply be eerie; it is only
in moments of extreme excitement that he becomes
outwardly ludicrous, but never too uncouth. His voice
is husky and harsh; but this again ought of itself never
to provoke the listener to laughter.”
Mime is the incarnation of evil and villainy,
demented by his monomania to capture the treasure
and its powers.Night and day he seethes with revenge
against his cruel brother, Alberich, and dreams that
when he gains the Ring he will enslave the Nibelungs
and master the world. Mime has build Siegfried’s
strength and vitality and nurtured him to be fearless,
but to slay the the Dragon the young hero needs an
omnipotent sword, and Mime, an expert blacksmith,
has been unable to forge it.
Act I: Wotan appears in Mime’s cave in the disguise
of the Wanderer to challenge Mime to a game of wits,
ultimately prophesying that only a fearless man can
temper the hardy fragments of the Sword: Nothung.
Of all that Mime has taught Siegfried, he has never
taught him fear; the Wanderer warns Mime to be wary
of his life before one who is fearless. Mime is confident
that Siegfried will succeed in killing Fafner, but shudders
that the boy might also be the fearless one who the
Wanderer predicted would kill him. Siegfried desperately
wants to learn fear and Mime assures him he will learn
it well when he confronts the terrifying Dragon. In
anticipation of his combat, Siegfried re-forges the
splinters of his father’s Sword, Nothung, while Mime
intrigues to kill the boy after he has accomplished the
deed.
Act II: Wotan, again in the disguise of the Wanderer,
encounters Alberich and alerts him that his brother Mime
plans to recover the entire treasure for himself by
poisoning Siegfried after he slays Fafner..
At dawn, Mime brings Siegfried before Fafner’s
forest cave. Siegfried awakens Fafner and fearlessly
slays him; as Fafner dies he warns the young hero
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about the Curse on the Gold. After tasting the
Dragon’s blood, Siegfried is able to understand a forest
bird who advises him to claim Fafner’s treasure,
beware of Mime’s sinister plot to kill him, and rescue
a maiden encircled by fire on a nearby mountain.
Taking the bird’s advice, Siegfried ignores the Hoard
as valueless but seizes the Ring and Tarnhelm.
The Dragon’s blood also enables Siegfried to
understand Mime’s villainous thoughts. When Mime
offers Siegfried a poisoned drink, Siegfried is aware of
his intentions and slays him. With the bird as his guide,
Siegfried begins his journey to the mountain where
Brünnhilde sleeps.
Act III: Wotan summons Erda to predict the
destiny of the Gods, but her negative prophesy causes
him to resign himself to their imminent downfall.
However, his hopes for the world’s salvation now turn
to the wise Brünnhilde.
As Siegfried nears Brünnhilde’s rock, the
Wanderer confronts him. Siegfried has no reason to
recognize him, is not aware that the stranger is his
grandfather, and treats him rudely and disrespectfully.
In anger and incomprehension, he smashes Wotan’s
Spear with Nothung; Wotan displays indescribable
emotional turmoil; his shattered Spears signifies the
inevitable doom of the Gods.
Siegfried scales the heights of Brünnhilde’s rock
and heroically passes through its flaming barrier. He
observes the slumbering Brünnhilde and awakens her
with a kiss; his emotions stirred, he has finally learned
fear. Brünnhilde solemnly greets the sunlight, sees the
young Siegfried, and they both gaze at each other in
feverish excitement. Brünnhilde, now a defenseless
mortal woman, surrenders herself to Siegfried’s love;
she has likewise learned fear.In rapturous moment that
expresses their profound desire and fulfillment of love,
the Goddess, untouched in Valhalla, becomes a woman;
and the boy becomes a man.
Brünnnhilde and Siegfried share the ecstasy of their
new-found love for each other. Brünnhilde will endow
Siegfried with her wisdom: through his great deeds
the old world order will end and a new one will emerge;
“let the twilight of the Gods begin.”

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