Siegmund: (enraptured: [[ #74: ]] O sweetest delight, most blessed of women (:#74).
Significantly, #38 and #11, last heard when Loge in R.2 was about to narrate his tale about the futility of seeking to find anything for which man would willingly renounce love and woman’s delight, is heard again now as Siegmund embraces Sieglinde in love and heroically resists the world’s pressure to renounce love for the sake of conformity, security and peace.
Siegmund sings the famous aria #73, “Winterstorms,” in which spring and love, brother and sister, escape the bonds of winter and are united in love. #74, related to #8 and #22, is a purely expressive motif representing longing for love, first heard as Siegmund, enraptured, sings “O sweetest delight, most blessed of women.” It is sometimes called the “Bliss” or “Rapture” Motif. #8, the first motif of this family to be heard, was initially associated with the Rhinedaughters’ cruel mockery of Alberich’s love while they led him on. #22 at its inception sounded as Fricka told Wotan of her desire that the domestic bliss she could offer him in Valhalla would keep him from straying outside it and seeking love elsewhere. It is noteworthy that in this family of three related motifs, #8 and #22 convey the bitterness (i.e., the fraud) and vulnerability of love, respectively.
#75 is first heard in association with the notion that spring and love, brother and sister, are united. These love motifs are in ironic contrast with Sieglinde’s description of Hunding’s conventional, hide-bound world as a trap, a strange, friendless, foreign wasteland, to which she was condemned until she found herself again, found herself at home, in her twin-brother Siegmund. Moments from now #75 will also be heard as Siegmund suggests (keeping in mind that neither he nor Sieglinde have recognized each other nor even shared their names, since Siegmund has not yet revealed his true name) that he will take his name from Sieglinde.
[V.1.3: C]
Now Siegmund and Sieglinde embark on a journey of reminiscence as they slowly recognize the physical features which link them with each other and with the old one-eyed man who once placed the sword in Hunding’s house-ash at the time of Sieglinde’s dreary wedding to Hunding, and finally acknowledge each other as long-lost twin brother and sister:
Sieglinde: (staring keenly into his eyes: #24) (#74:) Oh let me bend more closely towards you, that I see more clearly the noble light that breaks forth from your eye and face (:#74) (#58b?) and so sweetly suborns my senses!
Siegmund: Brightly you shine in the springtime moon; your waving hair forms a wondrous halo: (#58b?) what charms me now I can easily guess, (#75?:) for my gaze feasts upon you in rapture (:#75?)
