Götterdämmerung

The story of Götterdämerung

Deception leads to treachery, then devastation, when Siegfried is tricked into betraying Brünnhilde. Learning the truth of her beloved’s innocence, Brünnhilde at last returns the ring to the Rhinemaidens, before ordering that Valhalla be swallowed in flames. Impassioned, otherworldly music – including Siegfried’s transporting Funeral March and Brünnhilde’s electrifying Immolation Scene – pairs with unmatched drama in the all-consuming conclusion of Wagner’s unforgettable saga. 

The journey of composing an Epic

Though Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods) is the last opera in the Ring cycle, Wagner wrote the four Ring texts – or ‘poems’, as he called them – that inspired his tetralogy in reverse order, beginning with Siegfrieds Tod (Siegfried’s Death), which would become Götterdämmerung, in 1850. A year later, while a guest at the Swiss spa of Albisbrunn, Wagner drafted the prose story of Das Rheingold (The Rheingold) and Die Walküre (The Valkyrie) on two sides of the same sheet of paper, companion pieces to the earlier sketched Siegfried’s Tod and Jung-Siegfried (Young Siegfried) – later, Der junge Siegfried (The Young Siegfried) and even later, plain Siegfried.  

By 1852, with his text complete, Wagner set out to compose the music of the cycle, now in chronological order. Though he began the music for Das Rheingold in 1852 and followed shortly with Die Walküre, in 1856, midway through Act II of Siegfried, Wagner set his pen down and only returned to the work in 1869. In the break, he composed Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. And so, the music of Götterdämmerung, written between 1869 and 1872, was completed two decades after Wagner first began his composition journey, making it indeed a monumental conclusion to his greatest drama.  

To find out more about the Ring cycle, including key plot points and background information: read our Opera Essentials: The Ring cycle