It was night, and the three Norns had gathered at the foot of Valkyrie mountain. While they might sound a lot like characters from Stargate SG-1, these were actually three of Erda's daughters.
They had assembled to pass the Rope of Fate back and forth, as they looked at present, past, and future. They viewed the story of Wotan, and they saw his destiny, where the branches the World Ash were to be cut, and then stored in Valhalla, waiting for Loge to ignite them.

When they reached Alberich and the curse of the Ring, the rope broke, and their knowledge came to an end. Their images faded, as they sank back into the earth.
It was now daybreak on the mountain. Siegfried and Brünnhilde had exchanged gifts and made their betrothal official. Siegfried announced that he must leave her for a while, while he boldly sought new heroic escapades along the course of the Rhine.
Brünnhilde handed the reigns of Grane to Siegfried for transportation, and Siegfried handed her the Ring for safe keeping. Siegfried was remarkably uninterested in the power of the Ring, considering how arrogant he had become.
[Quibble: Since Brünnhilde was a warrior-woman, why should she have stayed behind, like some kind of housewife? What was she supposed to eat? Did she get nourishment from the flames?]
A real horse played the part of Grane, though no singers actually mounted the horse.
In the Hall of the Gibichungs, located on the bank of the Rhine, word had come of Siegfried's journey their way. The Gibichungs were ruled by the weak-willed King Gunther, his sister Gutrune, and their scheming half-brother, Hagen.
[Quibble: As in many versions of the sagas, these people knew things about Siegfried and Brünnhilde that they could not possibly have known. Who told them all these details?]
Hagen hatched a sinister plot: he convinced Gutrune to give Siegfried a potion that would make him forget Brünnhilde and fall in love with Gutrune, so that they could trick Siegfried into securing Brünnhilde as a bride for King Gunther, instead.
Siegfried arrived, and he naively became victimized by this plot.
Wagner strayed from the sagas with the character Gutrune, since Gunther's sister was usually named Kriemhild.
Brünnhilde tenderly kissed the Ring, while she thought of Siegfried, her love. Then she looked up to see her sister, Waltraute, as she flew toward the mountain. This was unexpected, since Wotan had forbidden any of the Valkyries from ever seeing her again.
Waltraute told her of the desperate situation in Valhalla, as Wotan could only sit, with the remains of the World Ash stacked around him, awaiting his doom.
She implored Brünnhilde to return the Ring to the Rhinemaidens, where it could be cleansed of it curse. However, Brünnhilde naively valued the Ring more as a token of Siegfried's love, than she worried the fate of Valhalla. Waltraute left in despair.
Later, Siegfried arrived, but he was wearing the Tarnhelm to disguise himself as Gunther, in which form he captured the humiliated Brünnhilde and took back the Ring. He had pledged that he would bring back Brünnhilde so Gunther could marry her. This disguise had been necessarily, since Gunther could never have passed through the flames.
When Hagen rested alone at the Hall of the Gibichungs, he was visited by Alberich in his dreams, so that they might hatch a plan to recover the Ring.
Hagen was the son of Alberich, thus making Hagen the champion of the Nibelungs in the quest for the Ring, while the gods had Siegfried.
Alberich's plotting had known no bounds. He had somehow gained the favors of Grimhilde, the mother of Gunther and Gutrune, whether by consent or force, so that he could produce an heir to fight for the Ring.
[Quibble: I cannot imagine how Alberich could ever pull this off!]
Brünnhilde arrived in Gibichung with Gunther, where she immediately noticed Siegfried with Gutrune, and with the Ring on his finger. Siegfried only had partial memories, but Brünnhilde implicated him is all sorts of trickery and treachery. Siegfried was clueless about all the plotting.
Hagen later offered to avenge Brünnhilde's dishonor, but she doubted he could succeed, because she had cast a magical spell (using the Ring?) to make Siegfried invincible. This was a weak plot device, all because tenors did not like to be bathed in fake blood.
Hagen tricked Brünnhilde info revealing the weakness in this spell, because she had not protected his back side, since he would never run from an enemy.
[Quibble: Brünnhilde seemed too intelligent to be duped by all this flimsy scheming.]
Siegfried had been invited to a boar hunt, to make it easier to kill him. Separated from the group, Siegfried encountered the three Rhinemaidens and teased them with the Ring. He refused to give it to them, despite their warnings, and despite their dire prediction that his wife would be more willing after he was dead.
Siegfried, being quite taken with himself, boasted of his adventures. When Siegfried could not remember what happened after he slew the dragon, Hagen capriciously gave him a potion to refresh his memory. As two of Wotan's crows flew by, Hagen from plunged his spear into Siegfried's back. Siegfried's last words were an affirmation of his love for Brünnhilde.
Wagner's most intense music ever, the funeral music for Siegfried, began as Siegfried's body was carried to Gibichung.
Back at the Hall of the Gibichungs, things did not go the way Hagen had planned. Gunther was very angry; then Hagen killed his half-brother in a brief fight. Gutrune was overcome with grief for the loss of both Siegfried and Gunther.
Hagen looked to take the Ring from Siegfried, but he was taken aback when the dead hero raised his hand, giving Brünnhilde a chance to snatch it up instead.
A funeral pyre was lighted, and an obscuring curtain came down. These last scenes required effects that were beyond the means of most opera companies.
While we did not see it, we know that, in the story, Brünnhilde mounted Grane and told the Rhinemaidens she was returning the Ring, just as she and her horse leaped into the burning pyre.
There had been a brief view of the halls of Valhalla, shortly before it had been consumed by flames. In some versions of the saga, Wotan started the fire by killing Loge, as a final punishment for his treachery.
[Quibble: All the heroes who had gone to Valhalla were most likely cheated out of their reward; perhaps they could have sued. Where do gods go when they die?]
In some versions of the sagas, Siegfried and Brünnhilde ascend, arm-in-arm, although it was not clear where they would be going, since Valhalla had been destroyed.
The banks of the Rhine overflowed, putting out the fire, and allowing the Rhinemaidens to retrieve the Ring, which they joyously returned to the original resting place as a lump of gold.
Hagen had watched all of this; he had not taken his eyes off the gold. He apparently had not inherited his father's ability to swim under water, since he was no match for the Rhinemaidens and drowned trying to reach the gold.
The rule of gods had ended, and the rule of men had begun!

Götterdämmerung Libretto

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