© Ruth Walz / DNO 2019
Die Walküre, the opera that turned me into a Wagner-aficionado now almost 20 years ago, returns for one last run of performances at the Dutch Nationale Opera. The opera that turned out to be not only my door to the world of opera but also proved to be my gateway to classical music. It was this opera, this very same production, in which I found something that I had lost but of which I could not suspect that what had been lost could be found in an incestuous love affair and a chief god who, eventually, shows himself human, all too human. An opera in a production of Pierre Audi with suggestive, atmospheric set designs by George Tsypin. A staging that ripened the mind for a world behind the dead-end street that pop music had become with music that was surprisingly well suited to ears that had grown up with blues-based pop & rock. From hard rock to Richard Wagner. Both music with balls like Iain Paterson once put it when he was asked about his love for both heavy guitars and the music of the sorcerer of Bayreuth. In the rerun of this Audi-Walküre, Paterson sings Wotan. Wagner veteran Stephen Milling will bring -without doubt- an intense Hunding to the stage, Eva-Maria Westbroek sings Sieglinde, Dorothea Herbert comes over to embody Walküre-sister Gerhilde and with her interpretation of Isolde in l'Opéra Bastille in recent memory, we will look forward to the Brünnhilde of Martina Serafin. Passionate and energetic will be the conducting of Marc Albrecht, a specialist in Romantic repertoire, in his last Wagner opera for DNO.
With music that is firmly anchored in soundtracks and movies (usual suspects Apocalypse Now and Bugs Bunny to name but two) is Die Walküre is a piece of genre-transgressing theater. Just as you don't have to love pop music to hear in Sgt. Pepper of The Beatles a masterpiece and don't have to be a jazz cat to appreciate Miles Davis' Kind of Blue, you don't have to be acquainted with opera to have a (very) satisfying night in the theater with Die Walküre.
Profound, fierce and sensual. A feast for the senses. With big gestures that appeal to the most intimate of feelings. Ho jo to ho!
With music that is firmly anchored in soundtracks and movies (usual suspects Apocalypse Now and Bugs Bunny to name but two) is Die Walküre is a piece of genre-transgressing theater. Just as you don't have to love pop music to hear in Sgt. Pepper of The Beatles a masterpiece and don't have to be a jazz cat to appreciate Miles Davis' Kind of Blue, you don't have to be acquainted with opera to have a (very) satisfying night in the theater with Die Walküre.
Profound, fierce and sensual. A feast for the senses. With big gestures that appeal to the most intimate of feelings. Ho jo to ho!
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- Wouter de Moor
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