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Hagen wants to hear Siegfried's life story, makes him a potion that will restore his memory. He drinks the last few drops to Brunhilde, his bride. Hagen thrusts the spear in his back. The sky darkens. Ravens circle around. The hero's body is carried back to Hagen's hall while the orchestra sounds the funeral march, a tragic review of all the Siegfried themes. Gunther thinks the ring should be his but Hagen kills him with a stroke of his sword. Hagen approaches the dead man. The hand with the ring points up in awful warning. The last big scene is Brunnhilde's. She has the body placed on a funeral pyre, and before she mounts her horse and rides into the flames she tosses the ring back into the Rhine. Hagen dives for it. The current sucks him under. In the distance Valhalla is burning, destroying the gods. The music in the Ring, its power and its tenderness, the way Wagner translated love, fear, hate, ecstasy, the way he de scribed the gentle river sounds, the crack ling of fire, the howling of wind and storm, the darkness of destructionthese are the things that transform his wordy allegory into a never-ending wonder. There are motifs for every character, for every important situation.* They all weave into a sure, clear pattern, lavish with melody. Over all is an orchestration of color and richness that has never been surpassed.
In the Metropolitan's cycle Frida Leider will be Brunnhilde, Lauritz Melchior both Siegmund and Siegfried. Ludwig Hofmann and Friedrich Schorr will take turns being Wotan. Schorr will be Gunther and Emanuel List, Hagen. All are expert singers with a sure grasp of the meaning of their roles, a flare for the grand Wagnerian manner. Frida Leider is the world's greatest Brunnhilde and the role is the most difficult in all grand opera. Time has roughened some of her full, warm tones. But her poise, her feeling for every phrase make it easy to believe in a creature half goddess, half woman.
But singers, no matter how competent, cannot carry the Ring. Hero of the performances will be a tall, lean, satanic-looking man who will shoot into the orchestra pit just as the lights go down, spring up on his high chair, rap sharply for attention and start the great orchestra singing. He is Artur Bodanzky, son of a Hungarian paper manufacturer who was pleased enough, when his young son showed a talent for the violin. But fiddling in the Vienna opera orchestra made Bodanzky's fingers itch for a baton. He became a musical comedy conductor, the highest-paid in Vienna. The routine gave him a nervous breakdown. He took a small opera job, worked up to be first conductor in Mannheim whence he came to New York in 1915.
Back at the Met, Bodanzky has grown with the years. Though he sometimes still rushes through a performance as though he could scarcely wait for its end, in the Ring cycle he is at his best, making great music seem greater whether he is pointing a bony finger at a singer, whipping his men into a mighty crescendo or hissing them quiet.
Mme Schtumann-Heink swam thus the night before she gave birth to one of her eight children.
*Easiest way for the layman to learn the themes is by phonograph records. The Gramophone Shop in New York sells two records made by the London Symphony which give 90 of the Ring's themes and define them clearly. Price $3.50.