She then leaps upon her horse Grane,
and with one bound rides into the towering flames. The Rhine, which has
overflowed its banks, now invades the hall. Hagen dashes into the flood
in search of the ring, but the Rhine-maidens have been before him.
Flosshilde, who has rescued the ring from the ashes of the pyre, holds
it exultantly aloft, while Wellgunde and Woglinde drag Hagen down to the
depths. Meanwhile a ruddy glow has overspread the heavens behind.
Valhalla is burning, and the gods in calm resignation await their final
annihilation. The old order yields, giving place to the new. The
ancient heaven, sapped by the lust of gold, has crumbled, and a new
world, founded upon self-sacrificing love, rises from its ashes to usher
in the era of freedom.
'Goetterdaemmerung' is prevented by its portentous length from ever
becoming popular to the same extent as Wagner's other works, but it
contains some of the noblest music he ever wrote. The final scene, for
sublimity of conception and grandeur of execution, remains unequalled in
the whole series of his writings. It fitly gathers together the many
threads of that vast fabric, 'Der Ring des Nibelungen.' Saint Saens says
of it that 'from the elevation of the last act of "Goetterdaemmerung," the
whole work appears, in its almost supernatural grandeur, like the chain
of the Alps seen from the summit of Mont Blanc.
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