Fan CastingThe Ring of the Nibelung: The Valkyrie

The second story of the movie version of the opera cycle by Richard Wagner, The Valkyrie (Die Walküre) takes place many years after the events of The Rhinegold. Siegmund and Sieglinde, the mortal twin children of Wotan, king of the gods, were separated from each other at an early age. But years later, Siegmund seeks shelter from a storm in the house of Sieglinde and her husband Hunding. The siblings recognize each other and fall in love. Siegmund then pulls a sword from the trunk of an ash tree, around which Hunding’s house is built, names it Nothung, and runs away with his sister. However, Fricka, Wotan's wife and the goddess of marriage, is disgusted by Siegmund and Sieglinde’s adulterous and incestuous relationship and insists that Wotan side with Hunding, against his own son. Wotan orders his daughter, Brünnhilde, a Valkyrie, to inform her half-brother Siegmund that he will lose his upcoming battle with Hunding. Impressed by Siegmund's courage, however, Brünnhilde disobeys her father by supporting him in the fight, but Wotan intervenes, allowing Siegmund to be killed. The distraught Sieglinde then learns from Brünnhilde that she is pregnant with Siegmund's child. The Valkyrie helps Sieglinde escape Wotan's wrath, but then accepts her own punishment: Wotan puts her to sleep on a rock, and summons Loge, the demigod of fire, to surround it with a magic circle of fire, which only the world's bravest hero will be able to penetrate to reach her.