There were grumbles in certain quarters about Rheingold’s restraint, its refusal to supply the wow Wagner’s epic implies. And as we get further and darker into a story that will end (in two further operas and some nine hours’ time) in fire and flood, the director seems to be heading not for a cataclysmic bang but a disturbing theatrical whimper. Have we written ourselves into a place beyond dragons and magic, arrived at a quieter kind of apocalypse: the creeping horror of ecological collapse?
Die Walküre at the Royal Opera House (Photo: Monika Rittershaus)If Rheingold is all action, Walküre plays out in emotional encounters: a husband at war with his wife; brother and sister falling helplessly in love at first meeting; a father casting out his daughter. For big opera it’s startlingly intimate, and Kosky trusts that, letting Antonio Pappano’s living, breathing orchestra do the wide-shots while he zooms in close.
Elisabet Strid and Christopher Maltman in Die Walküre (Photo: Monika Rittershaus) square CLASSICAL MUSIC Never mind Ravel’s exquisite music - I was scared someone would die on stage
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But any Walküre really comes down to the last act: the Valkyries’ famous entrance and the magic fire that surrounds Brunnhilde – showstoppers both, potentially. There are no winged horses here, just frenzied, ash-and-blood covered Bacchantes who propel the drama with the collective power of some serious voices (Lee Bisset’s Gerhilde and Maida Hundeling’s Helmwige leading the pack). As for the fire, no spoilers, but pyromaniacs won’t be disappointed by designer Rufus Didwiszus’s memorable solution, which leaves the audience with a closing image resonant enough to carry us through to the next chapter in this sober, slow-burn Ring Cycle.
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