Short Summary
Wotan's children Siegmund and Sieglinde, who is unhappily married to Hunding, fall in love with each other.
With their incestuous, adulterous love, they violate the guest and marriage laws that Wotan's wife Fricka watches over. Siegmund is therefore supposed to die in a duel with Hunding, but Wotan's daughter Brünnhilde, a Valkyrie, defies her father's will and fights for Siegmund. Wotan is forced to kill Siegmund himself. Brünnhilde is punished by her father: he surrounds her with a wall of fire and sinks her into a deep sleep.
Storyline
His wife, Sieglinde, receives the hero and gives him a drink. When Hunding returns home, Siegmund recounts his life filled with misfortune. Hunding soon realizes that he has before him the man he has set out to kill. As he wants to preserve the right of hospitality, he postpones the duel with the unarmed Siegmund until the next morning.
Sieglinde manages to give her husband a sleeping draught. She also shows Siegmund a sword that has been thrust into the trunk of an ash tree by a mysterious stranger. Siegmund and Sieglinde, who have fallen in love with each other, realize that they are twin siblings and violate the law of hospitality with their incestuous, adulterous love.
He fathered the twins Siegmund and Sieglinde with a mortal woman. He now wants to send the Valkyrie Brünnhilde - his daughter from his union with the goddess Erda - to the battlefield to give Siegmund victory against Hunding. But Wotan's wife Fricka intervenes: the Lord of Contracts must not cover up unlawful acts such as adultery and incest. Wotan's hope that a hero might one day win back the Ring of the Nibelung is dashed.
He orders Brünnhilde to kill Siegmund, against his own wishes. She announces Siegmund's imminent death, but promises him entry into Valhalla. Siegmund refuses the latter when he learns that Sieglinde cannot accompany him. Brünnhilde, moved by his love, defies Wotan's orders and fights for Siegmund. Wotan is forced to kill Siegmund himself.
Brünnhilde rescues the pregnant Sieglinde.
For Sieglinde and Siegmund's son, who is to be called Siegfried, she leaves behind the sword that was broken in the battle against Hunding and Wotan. Then the furious Wotan reaches the renegade Valkyrie, strips her of her divinity and condemns her to become the wife of the first best man. In the end, he softens his sentence: the best. He surrounds her with a wall of fire that only the best can pass through.
The production of the Ring tetralogy at the Vienna State Opera is by Sven-Eric Bechtolf, who has created a series of directorial works at the Haus am Ring. Wrapped in a timelessness, he tells the Ring storyas a model of the world, whereby the director does not want to set any concrete contemporary political or social interpretations: "If one refrains from beautiful blue-eyedness and refrains from moving smoothly from A to B, the Ring is worldly even without a "message". Despite or through abstraction. Rich in conflict, not stringent. Completely contradictory, but effective. In my eyes, it touches on the big questions and issues of our existence in a richly associative way, without having answered anything or held out the prospect of anything."
