Götterdämmerung: Dawn and Siegfried’s Rhine Journey

Program notes

About the Work

This is one of the most exhilarating orchestral passages in all of Wagner: the music that opens the Prologue of Götterdämmerung (‘Twilight of the Gods’), the fourth and final opera of the great Ring cycle. After a night together on the mountain-top ringed by magic fire, the hero Siegfried and the former Valkyrie Brünnhilde greet the dawn; Siegfried then sets off down the Rhine to seek adventure, leaving Brünnhilde with the cursed ring as a pledge of his love. In the concert hall, the orchestral ‘Dawn’ music and the famous ‘Rhine Journey’ are run together (in a familiar concert arrangement) to make a thrilling symphonic showpiece, opening this all-Wagner evening with radiant optimism and surging energy, the calm before the cycle’s catastrophe.

What to Listen For

Listen first for the ‘Dawn’ music: a slow, mysterious build as day breaks over the mountain, the orchestra glowing into warmth and light, with the lovers’ great themes rising up. Then comes the transition into the ‘Rhine Journey’ proper: listen for the surging, rippling string figures depicting the flowing river, the heroic horn-call associated with Siegfried, and the brilliant orchestral sweep as the music gathers tremendous momentum. Listen, too, for the recurring leitmotifs (themes for Siegfried, for the ring, for the Rhinemaidens and the Rhinegold) woven through the texture. The excerpt ends in a blaze of orchestral splendour, a glorious curtain-raiser brimming with the energy and promise that the rest of the opera will so devastatingly betray.