As with Das Rheingold, Wagner wished to defer any performance of the new work until it could be shown in the context of the completed cycle, but the 1870 Munich premiere was arranged at the insistence of his patron, King Ludwig II of Bavaria.

Sieglinde and the couple's unborn child are saved by the defiant actions of Wotan's daughter, the title character, Valkyrie Brünnhilde, who as a result faces the gods' retribution.

He would, therefore, create a series of music dramas, each telling a stage of the story, basing the narrative on a combination of myth and imagination; Siegfried's Death would provide the culmination.

[5] During the lengthy time that has passed since the gods entered Valhalla at the end of Das Rheingold, Fafner has used the Tarnhelm to assume the form of a dragon, and guards the gold and the ring in the depths of the forest.

She reveals that she was forced into the marriage and that during their wedding feast, an old man appeared and plunged a sword into the trunk of the ash tree which neither Hunding nor any of his companions have been able to remove.

Prelude to Act 2 Scene 1 On a high mountain ridge, Wotan instructs Brünnhilde, his Valkyrie daughter, to protect Siegmund in his forthcoming battle with Hunding.

Contemptuously, Wotan kills Hunding with a simple wave of hand, and sets out in pursuit of Brünnhilde, vowing to punish her harshly for her disobedience.

He faces her and declares her punishment: she is to be stripped of her Valkyrie status and become a mortal woman, to be held in defenceless sleep on the mountain, prey to any man who finds her.

"[25] Apart from some rough sketches, including an early version of what became Siegmund's "Spring Song" in Act I of Die Walküre, Wagner composed the Ring music in its proper sequence.

[26][12] Having completed the music for Das Rheingold in May 1854, he began composing Die Walküre in June, and finished the full orchestral score nearly two years later, in March 1856.

[27] This extended period is explained by several concurrent events and distractions, including Wagner's burgeoning friendship with Mathilde Wesendonck, and a lengthy concert tour in London at the invitation of the Royal Philharmonic Society, when he conducted a full season amid some controversy, although his own Tannhäuser overture was well received.

[28] The system of leitmotifs, integral to the Opera and Drama principles, is used to the full in Die Walküre; Holman numbers 36 such motifs that are introduced in the work.

Seeing little chance of the Ring project coming to any immediate fruition, and in need of money, in August 1857 Wagner abandoned work on it and concentrated instead on Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, and on a revised version of Tannhäuser.

[35][36][n 2] As the date for the Die Walküre premiere approached, Wagner grew more distressed and sullen; a letter from the critic Franz Müller reporting that everything was going well did nothing to console him.

[38] The premiere was attended by leading figures from the musical world, including Liszt, Brahms, Camille Saint-Saëns, and the violinist Joseph Joachim.

[43] He had originally envisaged holding the first Bayreuth Festival there in 1873, but delays in the building work, and in completing the Ring music, led to multiple postponements.

[46] Heinrich Porges, a contemporary chronicler, describes Wagner demonstrating to Amalie Materna, as Brünnhilde, how to sing the scene in which she tells Sieglinde of the impending birth of Siegfried: "He sang [the final words] with truly thrilling force".

[48] The Die Walküre performance on 14 August was free from the mechanical problems that had affected Das Rheingold the day before,[49] and was generally well received by the distinguished audience that included the Kaiser Wilhelm I, Emperor Pedro II of Brazil, representatives from various European royal houses and many of Europe's leading composers.

He was unnerved by an incident involving the kaiser, when the 79-year-old Wilhelm stumbled and almost fell over a doorstep,[49] and was very critical of two of his main singers, Niemann and Betz, whom he deemed "theatre parasites" and said he would never employ again – a view he later revised.

[8] The New York performance, on 2 April 1877, was conducted by Adolf Neuendorff as part of a Wagner festival organised by the Academy of Music;[54] it preceded the Metropolitan Opera premiere by nearly eight years.

However, the critic praised individual performances, and judged that the music and the drama had held the attention of an audience whose enthusiasm far exceeded that shown to Das Rheingold the previous day.

[60] During the 1880s and 1890s, Die Walküre was shown in many European cities, sometimes as part of a Ring cycle but often as an independent work: Brussels, Venice, Strasbourg and Budapest in 1883, Prague in 1885, St Petersburg in 1889, Copenhagen in 1891 and Stockholm in 1895.

[62] From the 1970s onwards there was increasing innovation; the Leipzig Die Walküre began the trend of placing the opening scene of Act II within Valhalla rather than on a mountain-top;[63] Harry Kupfer at Bayreuth in 1988 set the whole cycle in a post-nuclear dystopia;[63] Jürgen Flimm's Bayreuth 2000 production had Wotan as a corrupt businessman, sitting in an office surrounded by 21st-century paraphernalia, including a paper-shredder used to cover his tracks.

[67] Osborne writes that, like Das Rheingold, Die Walküre is primarily a work for solo voices, but with better integration of the vocal parts into the overall musical structure.

[66] As with its predecessor, Wagner composed Die Walküre under the principles he had defined in his book-length 1851 essay Opera and Drama, eschewing the traditional operatic norms of chorus, arias and vocal "numbers".

The critic Barry Millington opines that of all Wagner's works, Die Walküre is the fullest embodiment of the Opera and Drama precepts, achieving a complete synthesis of music and poetry.

[71] Roger Scruton refers to deviations in Die Walküre such as the "Spring Song" (Winterstürme), in which Siegmund holds up the action to declare his love for Sieglinde in what is to all intents and purposes an aria,[72] while Osborne notes the "impressive ensembles" in Act III, as the Valkyries sing together.

[73] The short prelude depicts a storm; a stamping rhythm in the basses rises to a climax in which "Donner's Call" from Das Rheingold is heard.

[30][83] The Wotan-Fricka dialogue that follows is illustrated by motifs that express Fricka's sour disillusion with her marriage, and Wotan's bitterness and frustration as he is unable to answer his wife's forceful arguments.

[89] The final section of the act is marked by what Millington describes as "a succession of carefully controlled climaxes", of which the most affecting is that of Wotan's farewell to his errant daughter.