Editing Götterdämmerung (section)

==== ''Scene 3'' ====
Back in the Gibichung Hall, Gutrune awaits Siegfried's return. Hagen arrives ahead of the funeral party. Gutrune is devastated when Siegfried's corpse is brought in. Confronted with his sister's pain, Gunther blames Siegfried's death on Hagen, who replies that Siegfried had incurred the penalty of his false oath. Moreover, he claims the ring on Siegfried's finger by right of conquest. When Gunther objects, Hagen appeals to the vassals to support his lawful claim. Gunther draws his sword but Hagen attacks and easily kills him. As he moves to take the ring, however, Siegfried's hand rises miraculously in a threatening gesture. Hagen as well as all present recoil in utmost fear.

Brünnhilde, with her features as if transfigured, suddenly makes her entrance (''"Schweigt eures Jammers jauchzenden Schwall!"''), having in the meantime met on the river's shores the daughters of the Rhine, who talked to her about the ring and its curse. She proclaims Siegfried innocent, as she now recognizes that he betrayed her only due to an intrigue, and declares that Siegfried's betrayal and death were necessary for her to become all-knowing and completely free. As the queen of the Gibichungs she then issues orders for a huge funeral pyre for the dead hero to be assembled by the river (''"Starke Scheite schichtet mir dort"'') and takes the ring from Siegfried's hand. With her eyes turned upwards to the sky, Brünnhilde in an apostrophe addresses Wotan, the ruler of oaths and laws, and proclaims that the death of the free hero Siegfried has atoned for the god's guilt; renouncing and overcoming through the might of grieving love the power of the ring, she bequeaths it to the Rhinemaidens, who are to claim it from her own ashes after fire has cleansed it of its curse, and declares that Wotan can finally truly rest in peace (''"Mein Erbe nun nehm' ich zu eigen"''). Brünnhilde then lights the funeral pyre with a firebrand and with "anxiously longed-for tidings" sends Wotan's ravens home to command Loge, the god of fire that still burns on her rock, to fly to Valhalla and set it on fire (''"Fliegt heim, ihr Raben!"''). After a final eulogy to the dead hero, Brünnhilde, willing to be reunited with her love, mounts her horse Grane and as a valkyrie rides into the flames, joining Siegfried in death.

A sequence of leitmotifs portray the fire flaring up, and the hall of the Gibichungs catching fire and collapsing. The Rhine overflows its banks, quenching the flames, and the Rhinemaidens swim in to claim the ring. Hagen in a frenzy tries at the last moment to stop them and seize the ring for himself, but they drag him into the depths and drown him (''"Zurück vom Ring!"''), the theme of the curse of the ring being then heard for the last time. As they celebrate the return of the Rhinegold to their river and the breaking of its curse, a red glow spreads through the sky. The surviving Gibichungs now see the interior of Valhalla with gods and heroes visible as described by Waltraute in Act I, Scene 3. A new fire flares up around the Hall of the Gods, hiding it from sight; the gods are consumed in flames and the curtain falls. At the very end of the work there emerges the sound of the ''Liebeserlösung'' motive - the redemption-through-love [[leitmotif]].