A Father Says Goodbye Forever to His Favorite Daughter
At the end of Wagner's Die Walküre, Wotan punishes his favorite daughter for disobeying him. Brünnhilde disobeyed because she showed compassion, and although he is furious, he also knows that she acted on the deepest part of what he himself wanted.
Wotan's punishment is terrible. He takes away her immortality, puts her into a supernatural sleep on a mountaintop, and leaves her there to be claimed by the first man who finds and awakens her.
But Brünnhilde begs him for one last act of mercy. If she must lose everything, surround her with something so terrifying that only an extraordinary hero could reach her.
Her father agrees.
He kisses her goodbye, puts her to sleep, and summons a wall of magic fire around the mountain. Then he leaves his daughter behind the flames, knowing that when she awakens, she will no longer belong to his world.
In Robert Lepage's production in 2011, this is what that powerful moment looked like. I was awestruck by the visual, watching open-mouthed. I included the screen captures below.
The set itself was known simply as "The Machine." Designed for Robert Lepage’s production of Wagner’s Ring cycle at the Metropolitan Opera, it was a roughly 90,000-pound structure consisting of twenty-four enormous aluminum planks mounted on a central axis. Each plank could rotate independently, while projections transformed their surfaces into forests, mountains, water, fire, and other landscapes. For this final scene, the Machine rotates and reconfigures itself until Brünnhilde appears impossibly high above Wotan, asleep upon her mountaintop, while the surrounding structure becomes the ring of fire that will separate her from the world of the gods.
The woman hanging upside down isn't actually the soprano. In Lepage's staging, Wotan leads Brünnhilde offstage and returns with a body double, who is secured to the Machine. The entire structure rotates until the audience is effectively looking down on Brünnhilde from above. She isn't supposed to be understood as hanging upside down. We have changed orientation. We are looking down upon the sleeping woman on the summit of a mountain.
Works Cited:
The Metropolitan Opera. “Refreshing the Ring.” Metropolitan Opera, https://www.metopera.org/discover/articles/refreshing-the-ring/. Accessed 19 Sept. 2026.The Metropolitan Opera. “Die Walküre.” Metropolitan Opera, https://www.metopera.org/discover/synopses/die-walkure/. Accessed 19 Sept. 2026.The Metropolitan Opera. “The Ring Cycle.” Metropolitan Opera, https://www.metopera.org/season/in-cinemas/the-ring-cycle/. Accessed 19 Sept. 2026.Wagner, Richard. Die Walküre. Wagner Libretto, https://www.wagnerlibretto.com/index.php?page=walkure&language=en. Accessed 19 Sept. 2026.
