Why The Royal Opera love performing Die Walküre

Conductor Antonio Pappano, director Keith Warner, Emily Magee (Sieglinde), Stuart Skelton (Siegmund), John Lundgren (Wotan), Sarah Connolly (Fricka) and Nina Stemme (Brünnhilde) discuss their experiences of rehearsing and performing Die Walküre. Tackling Wagner’s Ring Cycle can seem a daunting task: complicated storylines, huge casts and outrageous running times are often enough to put off all but the most committed Wagnerian. Find out more at www.roh.org.uk Die Walküre is the second work of Richard Wagner’s four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen, following Das Rheingold. It has become the most performed opera of the cycle, loved and admired for its nuanced and intelligent exploration of complex family entanglements, expressed through music of astonishing power – perhaps nowhere more so than in the glorious music for the incestuous lovers Siegmund and Sieglinde. Wotan’s voyage of self-discovery and ultimate resignation are at the heart of Keith Warner’s production, created for The Royal Opera in 2005. Wotan’s great Act II monologue is set in the abandoned former home of the gods, seen in Das Rheingold, whose evident disorder and damage present a striking representation of Wotan’s own inner decline and the gods’ incipient twilight. Recurring objects and visual motifs reflect the use of musical themes within Wagner’s score, which shows the composer at his most radical and most lyrical.