quarter of an hour; Hagen goes to take the ring from Siegfried's finger,
but the corpse raises its hand menacingly and all draw back aghast.
Brunnhilda enters; all now has become clear to her, and she resolves
that she, like Wotan, will renounce a loveless life--a life based on
fraud and tyranny. She tells Gutruna that Siegfried has never belonged
to her--is hers, Brunnhilda's; and on receiving this crushing blow,
Gutruna creeps to her brother's side and lies there, miserable and
hopeless. He is dead; but he was the list of her kin and only friend,
and, robbed of even the memory of Siegfried, to be near his dead body
seems better than nothing. Then Brunnhilda commands the funeral pyre to
be built and the body of Siegfried placed on it; she chants her song in
praise of love, mounts her horse Grani, and rides through the fire into
the Rhine. Shouting "The ring!" Hagen dashes after her; the ring has
returned to the maidens, and Loge, unchained, mounts up and Walhalla is
consumed. So ends the third subsidiary drama of the _Ring_.

The music is the last Wagner wrote in his ripe period; when we get to
_Parsifal_ his powers were waning. In point of structure it is the same
as that of _Siegfried_. It has less of springtime freshness than the
_Valkyrie_, and the prevailing colour is sombre and tragic; but there
are magnificent things. The Norns scene, the Journey of the Rhine, the
Waltrante scene, the funeral march, and Brunnhilda's final speech, are
Wagner in the full glory of his strength.

The complete _Ring_ was given for the first time at the opening of the
Bayreuth (Wagner) Theatre in 1876. The performance did not pay, and the
expenses had to be covered by selling the dresses and scenery. Bayreuth
was by no means in those days the fashionable summer resort it has since
become. Nevertheless, the immediate effect felt throughout Europe was
electric, stupendous. As a mere advertisement, it proved more effective