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Siegfried

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Erda
Erda is the primordial goddess of the Earth. The source of all wisdom, she has a profound understanding of the world: not only does she know the past, she also has a prophetic vision of the future, right up to the end of the world. In Das Rheingold, just as Wotan is refusing to give the Ring to the giants, Erda appears in the guise of a mysterious deus ex machina. She exhorts him to renounce the cursed jewel and warns, ‘All that is – ends! A day of darkness dawns for the gods’. Intrigued, Wotan seeks her out afterwards and with “the wizardry of love” exhorts her counsel. Brünnhilde, one of the nine Valkyries, is born of their union. In Siegfried, too, the supreme god, in the guise of ‘the Wanderer’, wants to avail himself of Erda’s prophesies. He calls upon her one last time, but the ‘Urwala’ has nothing more to say. Weary and confused by what she learns from Wotan, she sinks back into a deep sleep, from which she will never awake.

‘Erda’ is the Old High German word for ‘Earth’ and is associated with the Nordic Earth goddess Jörd. Wagner derived his material for this character from the Edda songs and from Jacob Grimm’s Deutsche Mythologie, among others.
Wotan / Der Wanderer
Once, when the Earth was still lingering in its original state, free from any domination, the god Wotan sacrificed one of his eyes to drink from the well of wisdom at the foot of the Yggdrasil, the sacred ash tree in Norse cosmology. He then broke a branch from the tree, made it into a spear and carved into it in runic script the laws by which he would rule over the gods, dwarves, giants and human beings. In Das Rheingold, Wotan saw his omnipotence both consolidated by the construction of his fortress Walhalla and threatened by the creation of the Ring. Trying to acquire the latter himself would go against his own laws, and so Wotan counts on his progeny: he conceives nine Valkyries, including Brünnhilde, and in the guise of Wälse, he brings forth the human twins Sieglinde and Siegmund, who, as a free hero, will be able to defeat the dragon Fafner and thus reclaim the Ring. Or so does Wotan hope. In Die Walküre, this scheme fails catastrophically: his wife Fricka furiously reminds him of his duties as supreme god and exposes the contradictions of his plans. With merciless logic, she compels Wotan to order the death of his human children. When, on top of that, Brünnhilde disobediently assists them and he is also forced to renounce his favourite daughter, all he longs for is the end... In Siegfried, when he sees his fearless grandson at work, he senses that this 'Götterdämmerung' (Twilight of the Gods) is indeed imminent. Under the rock of the sleeping Brünnhilde, he comes face to face with Siegfried in a final, ultimate confrontation...
Siegfried
Siegfried, the son of Sieglinde and Siegmund, has been raised as a foster child by Mime. They live in a cave in the forest where Siegfried enjoys wandering among the birds and the beasts. After learning of his parents’ tragic fate, he asks Mime to reforge Nothung, his father’s sword. The Nibelung is unable to perform the task and Siegfried decides to do it himself. Telling him he must learn to be fearful, Mime takes the boy to Fafner’s lair. Once there, Siegfried tries to imitate the song of a bird and accidentally wakes up the dragon. After a brief exchange, they fight and Siegfried kills Fafner, who warns him that the Ring is cursed. Now able to understand the wood bird’s song, the young hero follows its instructions: he takes both the Ring and the magic helmet Tarnhelm, and he makes his way to the top of the mountain, where Brünnhilde is sleeping surrounded by magic fire. There, he is greeted by an old man (Wotan in disguise) who blocks his path, but Siegfried mocks him and breaks his spear with a single blow from Nothung. Equally determined, he passes through the ring of fire. On catching sight of Brünnhilde, the first woman he has ever seen, he immediately falls for her and at last experiences fear. He kisses her, waking her from her magic sleep, and the two then solemnly profess their love for each other.

Siegfried is based on the hero Sigurd from the Völsunga saga and the Thidrekssaga but also on the main character from The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was, one of the folktales collected by the Brothers Grimm.
Mime
The Nibelung Mime is a cunning and skilful blacksmith. He covets the Ring forged by his brother Alberich, which confers absolute power on its wearer. After Sieglinde’s death, Mime raised her son, the human boy Siegfried, as a foster child to kill Fafner, now a gigantic dragon who is still in possession of the Ring. Unable to reforge Nothung, the broken sword of Siegfried’s father, Mime tries in vain to forge a new one. An old man (Wotan in disguise) asks for his hospitality. In return, Mime challenges him to a game of riddles but, even when the old man prevails, he still refuses to let him in. The stranger tells Mime he will die at the hands of the ‘one who does not know fear’. After Siegfried has reforged Nothung himself, Mime plans to poison the boy once Fafner has been killed. During the battle, Alberich and Mime meet and quarrel over the treasure. When Siegfried returns, Mime congratulates him and offers him the poisoned drink. However, Siegfried reads Mime's treacherous thoughts and stabs him to death.

The character of Mime appears in the Old Norse Thidrekssage, where he is not a dwarf, but a human.
Alberich
Mockingly rejected by the Rhinemaidens in Das Rheingold, the dwarf Alberich seizes their precious hoard, renounces love and from the gold forges a Ring, which makes him all-powerful. When Wotan and Loge craftily cheat him out of the Ring, he lays a terrible curse on it: he who possesses it will be plagued by troubles; he who does not will be consumed by envy! The latter certainly applies to Alberich, who throughout the tetralogy stops at nothing to recover the gem.

Etymologically, Alberich means ‘master of the elves’ and is synonymous with the French ‘Auberon’ and the English ‘Oberon’. The character appears in the Germanic heroic epic Ortnit and in the Nibelungenlied.
Fafner
Fafner is one of the two giants in Das Rheingold that built Valhalla for the gods, for which they were rewarded with the Nibelungen gold and the Ring. Blinded by greed, Fafner slayed his good-natured brother Fasolt before making off with the entire hoard of treasure. In the guise of a snake-like dragon, he now guards it high up in the mountains. A necessary deterrent, for more than one would-be hijacker is lurking around his cave Neidhöhle...

Fafner was inspired by the dwarf Fáfnir from the Germanic Sigurd legends who, after the murder of his father, transforms himself into a gigantic half-dragon to guard his cursed treasure. Anyone who drinks his blood will acquire the magic gift of talking to animals and reading people’s minds.
Brünnhilde
One of the nine Valkyries, Brünnhilde is the daughter of Wotan and Erda. In Siegfried, we find her sleeping on a high rock, encircled by a sea of fire. A punishment inflicted by her father Wotan after disobeying him in Die Walküre by assisting the doomed hero Siegmund in a life-and-death duel and then helping his pregnant lover Sieglinde flee. For years now, she has been waiting like a Wagnerian Sleeping Beauty for her father's curse to be broken and a fearless hero to go through the fire to kiss her awake.

Brynhild is one of the most famous Valkyries in Norse mythology and a central character in the Sigurd cycle. In Old Norse, her name means literally ‘Hildr of the breastplate’. The character was inspired by the Visigoth princess Brunhilda, the wife of the Merovingian king Sigebert I. She was famous for her bitter feud with Queen Fredegund. The latter’s son, Chlothar, ordered the queen to be tortured, tied by her hair as well as by an arm and a leg to the tail of a wild horse.
Siegmund
Sieglinde