Gotterdammerung ("Twilight of the Gods"), which premiered at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus on August 17, 1876, is the fourth and final opera in Richard Wagner's epic Ring Cycle, Der Ring des Nibelungen. In this portion of the piece, Siegfried's body is carried away in a solemn funeral procession after having been stabbed in the back by Hagen (who didn't do it by talking with Rolling Stone; he did it with a spear), thus the common description of this tone as "Siegfried's Funeral March". Gotterdammerung is a translation into German of the Old Norse phrase Ragnarok (literally "ruling powers' fate", usually interpreted as the "final destiny of the gods"), specifically defined as "gods' haziness" or "gods' nebulousness", and is generally understood to be the End Time, as in a cataclysmic downfall or momentous apocalyptic event, especially of a regime, an institution, a society, or a culture.
