Right from the beginning of the fourth and last part of Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, it is already clear that the gods’ decline is inevitable.  It is the humans that now increasingly influence the course of events. Siegfried and Brünnhilde’s love affair does not bode well, as King Gunther covets the world’s most exceptional woman. As the innocent-guilty instrument of the power-hungry Hagen, Alberich’s son, Siegfried wins her for himself. A false oath seals Siegfried’s doom. Brünnhilde betrays how the radiant hero can be toppled. But has the old order been restored when Brünnhilde returns the Ring to the Rhine in the final scene? Wagner wrote the text for Götterdämmerung (originally entitled Siegfrieds Tod – “Siegfried’s Death”) as the first of the four Ring parts, so after the composition break that followed the Lohengrin world premiere, and which was dedicated to writing his most important art theoretical texts. Wagner composed the piece as the last of the cycle, which resulted in a style that at first glance appears almost traditional, with several ensembles and even choirs – unique in the almost sixteen-hour mammoth work. In the superior treatment of the singing voices, the exceedingly artful motif technique and the finesse of the timbres, Götterdämmerung is indeed a solitaire gemstone in the opera universe.