Richard Wagner at 200

‘The overpowering accents of the music that accompanies Siegfried’s funeral cortège no longer tell of the woodland boy who set out to learn the meaning of fear; they speak to our emotions of what is really passing behind the lowering veils of mist: it is the sun-hero himself who lies upon the bier, slain by the pallid forces of darkness — and there are hints in the text to support what we feel in the music: “A wild boar’s fury”, it says, and: “Behold the cursed boar,” says Gunther, pointing to Hagen, “who slew this noble flesh.”