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Although it has its questionable moments, this DVD of Wagner's Die Walküre is largely very insightful, and mostly well sung.
The second part of the Ring Cycle is to me the most interesting, bringing together the human and divine worlds more grippingly than any of the other three.
It also has some of the best music, with Siegmund's aria, the Ride of the Valkyries and the Magic Fire Music/Wotan's Farewell just a few examples of Wagner at his finest.
The first act is a bit like a mini-Italian opera. Wotan's son Siegmund meets his twin sister Sieglinde by chance. They fall incestuously in love, and after a ravishing love duet lasting the second half of the act, they flee Sieglinde's husband Hunding.
London opera goers have been a little spoilt by last year's thrilling pairing of Plàcido Domingo and Waltraud Meier in these roles, and unfortunately this DVD lacks the same vocal electricity. Linda Watson is vocally excellent as Sieglinde, but she doesn't have either the stage presence or intelligence in performance that Meier consistently shows. Richard Berkeley-Steele eventually musters some heroic tone as Siegmund, but it's a long time coming, and he spends most of the evening weaving about and looking worried.
The second act provides a long encounter between Wotan and his daughter Brünnhilde. Wotan realises he has to let Hunding kill Siegmund if nature is to be left undisturbed, but Brünnhilde determines to save him. Although Wotan intervenes, Brünnhilde saves Sieglinde, who is pregnant with Siegmund's son Siegfried, the superhero. Wotan pursues Brünnhilde in the final act, catching up with her and punishing her by encircling her in a ring of fire. He puts her into a deep sleep, from which she will not wake until Siegfried comes to find her at the end of the next opera.
The director Harry Kupfer places great emphasis on the psychological background to the Brünnhilde/Wotan scenes, intensifying the physical aspect by having them touch and hold one another and fling themselves to the floor at one point. He's lucky to have such great singers to play with.
Deborah Polaski is the finest Brünnhilde since Dame Anne Evans, matching vocal stamina with intelligent acting. In Kupfer's vision she's a real warrior-bodyguard, almost a mirror image of Wotan. The latter is sung with enormous energy by Falk Struckmann, though it's a pity that he's given such a comical costume and appearance by Reinhard Heinrich. The second act duet between the two singers is well-paced and the third act encounter high-octane.
Hans Scharvernoch's settings are dominated by the huge ash tree that represents nature. As the characters destroy the world around them, the tree withers and (apparently) dies at the end of Twilight of the Gods. The back of the stage is overshadowed by a large grid, which glows red and eventually descends to show the flames that engulf Brünnhilde at the opera's close. It's all highly intelligent, and if the direction sometimes favours the cerebral over the emotional, the gloriously warm string and brass playing from the Symphony Orchestra of the Gran Treatre del Liceu in Barcelona, under then-Music Director Bertrand de Billy, more than makes up for it.
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