I will mention such instances as the Rhine-maidens' wail, heard far down in the valley as the gods march triumphantly to Valhalla; the passage in which Siegmund recounts how on coming home one day he found the house in ashes, his sister and father gone, and only a wolf-skin lying on the ground; the Fate theme, and the haunting song of the Rhine-maidens in the last act of the _Dusk of the Gods_. Now, though one would regret the loss of some of the music I have mentioned, the _Rhinegold_ is tedious, long in proportion to the significance--musical and dramatic--of its content, and on the whole a bore. I never go to see it. The Fricka music in the second scene is as effective on the piano as in the theatre, and the last scene is as effective on a concert orchestra as in the theatre; in fact, in the theatre the device of a pasteboard rainbow, coloured to suit German taste, detracts from the effect. Only a fool would dare to say that Wagner should have done this, that or the other; but I venture to say that if he had not suffered from that very German malady, a desire to work back to the beginning of things, and to embody the result in his art, Wagner would have found a better means than a two-hour long "fore-evening" to prepare for the real drama of the _Ring_. That drama opens in earnest with _The Valkyrie_--the story of how, in pursuing his ambitious plan, Wotan is forced to sacrifice first his own son, then his daughter Brunnhilde, who is the incarnation of all that is sweet and beautiful in his own nature. She shares, it is true, his curiously limited immortality--an immortality that may be, and finally is, curtailed--but she can suffer a punishment worse to her than extinction. The prelude opens with the roar and hoarse scream of the storm as it dashes through the forest--- the plash of the rain, the flashing of lightning and the roll of the thunder. The musical idea was obviously suggested by Schubert's "Erl-king." In each we have the same rapidly-reiterated notes in the upper part, and Wagner's bars are simply a variant of Schubert's. The curtain rises on Hunding's hut; the door is burst open, and Siegmund tumbles in exhausted, and falls before the fire. Sieglinda gives him mead, and one sees it is a case of love at first sight. Hunding enters, and, finding Siegmund to be an enemy of his, gives him until morning, and tells him that then he must fight. Sieglinda drugs her husband's night-draught, and, while he is sleeping, tells Siegmund of how, when she was abducted, and compelled against her will to marry Hunding, a gray-bearded stranger came in, with his hat drawn over one eye--Wotan had but one eye--and wearing a dark-blue cloak marked with stars, suggested by the deep-blue star-pierced sky by night. He drove a sword into the ash trunk, and, declaring that only a man strong enough to draw it out should wield it, went his way. Many have tried, and none succeeded. Siegmund at once draws it, and the pair fly.