Awesome / The Ring of the Nibelung

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• Let's just put the entire Ring Cycle here. All fourteen hours or so of it.
• The most popular among the lay public, the "Ride of the Valkyries", tends rather to be looked down upon by Wagnerians and anti-Wagnerians alike (Eric Blom once called it "the most tasteless piece of music ever written"). Among the many, many, many pieces favored by the former (the latter, of course, would favor no Wagner at all) are „Ein Schwert verhieß mir der Vater" and „Winterstürme" from Walküre, and "Siegfried's Rhine Journey" and "Siegfried's Funeral March" from Götterdämmerung.
  • Actually, many Wagnerians like "Ride of the Valkyries" just fine.
• Siegfried. He's one of the greatest heroes that mankind has known. He's one of the most iconic characters in all of Western culture. He's superb. He's epic. He's badass. He's so manly, just listening to his singing will make hair grow on your chest. Just listen to when he shouts his heroic boast: "SOON I WILL WIELD YOU AS MY SWOOOOOOORD!"
  • His aria while he reforges Nothung just oozes masculinity everywhere! It's so manly that just listening to it will make hair grow even in the soles of your feet!
  • He's so brave that (like in his first appearance in the operas) he cheerfully plays with bears.
  • He's so fearless that he makes mundane comments at the face of peril, like after awakening a dragon.
  • He's so strong that, in no time at all, he files a sword to splinters, WITHOUT EVEN BREAKING A SWEAT (anyone that has worked with a file can tell you that filing a piece of metal is a tiresome, lengthy and demanding task).
  • Although it is true that he's not the sharpest tool in the drawer, he is smart enough to realize how to reforge the sword even though he never paid attention to Mime's lessons.
  • He's sensitive to the point that he is moved just by seeing the forest animals, and is glad to make friends with a woodbird.
  • He doesn't care about riches or golden hoards, and the only reason he picks up the tarnhelm and ring is because a woodbird told him.
  • Lots of times he succeeded because he was unaware of the sheer impossibility or dangerousness of the tasks he had to do (or, from another point of view, had he known how dangerous those tasks were, he would have been afraid, and only he who doesn't knows fear could accomplish them).
    • Case in point: he is completely ignorant of the enormous power of Wotan, and doesn't even tremble at his glance (Sieglinde says in Die Walküre that men shuddered just from looking at Wotan's only eye).
    • At the end of Die Walküre, Wotan says "he who fears my spear's point will not pass through this fire!", and precisely because of that, Siegfried manages to cut his spear, and later break through the fire and reach the summit of Brünnhilde's Rock.
    • He managed to accomplish the impossible task of passing through Brünnhilde Rock's fire... TWICE!
  • He makes great efforts in trying to play a wooden flute to treat a woodbird, and even though his musical attempts end up as poor, what counts is that he was brave to try doing something different to what he was used to do.
  • After dealing a deadly strike to Fafner, he's respectful with his dying enemy and talks respectfully with him.
  • He shows great love for his parents, who he never knew, often mentioning them in his musings. He loves them to the point that his blood boils when he finds the murderer of his father.
  • He reaches the summit of Brünnhilde's rock and awakens her, putting an end to her magical sleep, and starting a beautiful love story.
    • He's so faithful to her that a forgetfulness magic potion is needed to make him cheat on her!
    • When he's dying, he talks about Brünnhilde, proving she was his one and only love, and that he loves she until the last second of his life.
• Brünnhilde.
  • Wotan went to great pains to create the ultimate hero who could save the world from the ring and its destructive power, and he never realized that his creation was already made, because it is Brünnhilde who ultimately saves the world from the ring's curse in ''Götterdämmerung''!
  • She's so brave that she disobeys the orders of the very king of the gods, even knowing the reprisals to which she would be exposed!
  • Can we all agree that her battle cry is just badass? HOJOTOHO! HOJOTOHO! HEIAHAAAA! HEIAHAAAAAAAAA!
  • She meets the love of her life in Siegfried and they sing together one of the most beautiful duets in the history of opera.
  • Not just one, but two!
• Wotan.
  • He built his power by way of diplomacy, compromises, and treaties. Quite different to the usual depiction of gods as omnipotent beings that act unilaterally.
  • Even though he's the king of the gods and could take advantage of his enormous power, lots of times during the operas he shows constraint (he even stops Donner as he intends to hammer the giants, because that would tear down the power he gained respecting his treaties).
  • Plus, his spear's leitmotif is badass!
  • The leitmotif that sounds when he's angry just gives you the goosebumps! You can picture the powerful god angry and riding to you!
  • What is the prize one is going to sacrifice to be the best? Well, Wotan sacrificed one of his eyes, becoming forever after a one-eyed, thus showing how big is his will to be the best in the world!
  • His biggest ambition isn't to be the strongest in the world, though. It is being the wisest and to always learn something new. He wanders the Earth under the disguise of a wanderer just to be more knowledgeable!
    • In a sense, he's like Goku, but instead of always wanting to meet someone strong for the sake of being stronger, he wants to meet persons with knowledge to gain more knowledge!
  • In the 1992 Barenboim production, it is Wotan that sends the woodbird to talk to Siegfried, this means that Wotan is planning everything and influencing the nature to drive Siegfried's actions, in other words: Wotan is the one making Siegfried kill Fafner, kill Mime and rescue Brünnhilde!
• Loge.
  • He's possibly the smartest, craftiest and foxiest in all the Ring cycle. Even though the gods loathe him because, as Fricka says, he has already dealt lots of troubles and fooled them lots of times by the time the story starts, they still rely on him as the only one that can fix the troubles they get themselves in.
  • And, because he's actually a demi-god and not a full god, he's free of the constraints they face, like being required to eat Freia's golden apples!
  • He doesn't care about power, defeating enemies or gaining the ultimate weapon of destruction. He's in it just for the pure fun of trolling everyone.
  • The way he trolls the other characters is pure gold. See the quotes for when he trolls the gods because they are aging quickly without Freia's golden apples, or when he trolls Alberich because he has been trapped.
  • Also, for all the mocking and poking fun, he's the only that has a true sense of justice, mentioning like 6 times in the opera that they got to retrieve the gold to the Rhine's daughters, when all the other characters had forgotten about them, and reminding everyone that the Rhine's daughters are the legitimate owners of the gold.
    • When Wotan orders him to say something to the Rhine's daughters to make them shut up, he craftily utters some banter that makes the gods be viewed in an even more negative light. Thus, the Rhine's daughters come to see the gods as if they were heartless wretches without a sense of justice.
    • All of this shows that he's actually a Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
  • His fire music when Wotan summons him to encircle Brünnhilde's rock is some of the most beautiful music in the whole Ring cycle!
  • At the end of Rheingold, he muses that he's tempted to burn the gods and their false splendor. Seeing how the Ring cycle ends, he succeeds.
• Fricka (assuming you root for her at all) has a Crowning Moment of Awesome in Die Walküre when Wotan says "Was verlangst du?", indicating that she has won.
• Erda.
  • She's the Germanic personification of Mother Nature.
  • She proves to be wiser even than Wotan, when she comes out from the earth to warn him that he better give up the ring or he will be in a calamity!
  • She protagonizes one of the most gutsy and bravest moments in the whole Ring cycle, when she denounces Wotan for his falseness! When she points out that he's a god that supposedly encourages boldness and fairness, but that then punishes the daring and enforces injustice, she single-handedly tears down all the false pretentiousness of the high and mighty Wotan!
• Alberich. By the time the story starts, he has dealt many troubles to the giants and has always escaped, as Fasolt says. Just think about it: a dwarf in inferiority of physical conditions against the giants, has nevertheless fooled them repeatedly!
• Mime.
  • Many see him as a sorry, pitiful and pathetic individual, but he managed to become the best blacksmith in a whole race of blacksmiths, miners and artisans!
  • Plus, he was a gentleman and treated tenderly Sieglinde while she was pregnant, showing that he has empathy for the other sex.
• Fasolt. He seems to be the only one smart enough to realize that the only way the dwindling race of giants has to avoid extinction is catching Freia, and is one of the few characters in the whole shebang to act out of love rather than a lust for power.
• Fafner. He survives long enough to be the Last of His Kind. Plus, both as a giant and as a dragon he's badass.
• Siegmund.
  • He's so tough that the only reason he escapes from Hunding's goons is because his equipment was shattered. In his own words: "if only my spear and shield had been as half as tough as my body, I would have never run away!"
  • He managed to be the only one that could pull Nothung out of the tree, when many warriors had tried fruitlessly.
  • He's so strong that it is required the divine intervention of the king of gods to kill him.
  • Plus, he sings beautifully in his aria "Winter storms have ceded to May's moon"
• Sieglinde.
  • She is brave and rises against her abusive husband, whom she has always resented because it was a forced marriage.
  • She displays cunning, as she devises a drink to make him sleep, so as to plot more calmly.
  • She shows great love to her future baby, as she abandons the idea of wanting death as soon as she discovers she's pregnant.
• All the Valkyries. They ultimately show compassion to a fellow woman, and as soon as they discover she's pregnant they help her to escape to safety.
  • In the 2006 Copenhagen production, this becomes an even more important plot point, as the production, which has been called the "Feminist Ring", puts an even greater emphasis in the feminine side of the Ring cycle.
• Hagen. Let's admit it, his battle cry is epic! HOI-HOOOO! HOI-HOOOOOOO!

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