By 1856, however, Schopenhauer had struck decisively: Wagner wrote in a letter that "in the course of the myth this love had emerged as fundamentally annihilating," and
Brunnhilde's final words are now "Grieving love's profoundest suffering opened my eyes for me: I saw the world end." This is much more faithful to the action of Gotterdammerung (Twilight of the Gods), the final installment of The Ring, which sees Siegfried, under the influence of an evil potion, not only betray
Brunnhilde with a very objectionable woman, but also procure her for a most unsavory man; for which
Brunnhilde confides to Hagen, the son of the Nibelung Alberich, conceived not in love but in violent lust, how he might kill the nearly invulnerable Siegfried.
He and
Brunnhilde (who is Wotan's daughter) shall be the redeemer and redemptrix of the world, replacing the old order of covenants with the new order of do whatever feels right.
He gets into some fairly dicey tonality symbolism (could it be, at this late date, after Alfred Lorenz?) in this chapter, insisting for example that the three tones in the augmented triad that accompanies
Brunnhilde's heroic equestrian leap into oblivion "incorporates Grane's A, Siegfried's heroic F and the drama's final key of D flat" (why not say "the key of burning Valhalla"?), and that it thus "completes the 'counter-structures' which were left unresolved at
Brunnhilde's giving of Grane to Siegfried in Act I scene i as a love token in exchange for the ring, when the tonality moved from E minor, through G minor to B flat, and then from F to a pause on the dominant A, and closed with a long crescendo on an A triad as she asked that Siegfried often speak her name to the horse" (pp.
Siegfried, in Gotterdammerung, gives the Ring--with tragic irony--as a love-token to
Brunnhilde, before riding forth sounding his horn.
Indeed, apart from Siegfried's death and funeral music there is nothing more "tragic" in the Ring, in any common-sense view of that word, than Wotan's anguished narrative to
Brunnhilde in Die Walkure 2.2.
Though protected by
Brunnhilde, Siegmund battles with Hundig and is killed.
Wagner demands special effects: a rainbow bridge to carry the gods to Valhalla, the magic fire that encircles the sleeping
Brunnhilde, a dragon and the eventual apocalypse in flames.
So
Brunnhilde, similarly unleashing what is both love song and elegy for Siegfried, would bring about the end of a flawed universe.
Gudrun Schwarz finds that Brunhild of the medieval epic poem, more than Wagner's
Brunnhilde whom his Siegfried loves and leaves, served as an image of Germanic womanhood for women in the Nazi period in their aspirations to power, seeing themselves through National Socialist propaganda as heroic female fighters for a new Germanic Empire and as belonging to the master race (pp.
Mathilde Wesendonck played a decisive part as a model for the characters not only of Sieglinde and
Brunnhilde but also of Eva and Isolde.
Here, Siegfried, concealed in the cave, sang while Gunther mimed (in a robotic way); at the close of the act, when Siegfried has driven
Brunnhilde into the cave, he re-emerged as himself, taking off the Tarnhelm.
She has made roles such as
Brunnhilde, Isolde and Ariadne her own in a fascinating international career.