Presentation

It was Brünnhilde herself at the end of The Valkyrie who baptised the son of Siegmund and Sieglinde, the long-awaited her : Siegfried. The second “day” presents Siegfried in his rebellious youth, an unruly, bear-taming, dragon-slaying adolescent. At the very heart of the Ring, between the Adagio appassionato of The Valkyrie and the grandiose finale of Twilight of the Gods, Siegfried has always seemed like the scherzo, a light and cheerful work. Furthermore, the hero who appears is anything but a mystical knight or the saviour of an entire people. Instead he is “a real man stripped bare”, in whom Wagner saw with delight “all the pulsating blood, all the vigorous muscular contractions amid the unfettered freedom of physical movement; simply put, man in his truest state—namely, the handsome young man in the resplendent freshness of his strength who is at the origin of all primitive legends.”