United Kingdom Wagner, Walküre: Soloists, Orchestra of the Royal Opera House / Sir Antonio Pappano (conductor). Broadcast live (directed by Peter Jones) from the Royal Opera House, London, to Cineworld Basildon, Essex, 14.5.2025. (JPr)
The headline of my Das Rheingold review (here) in September 2023 called it a ‘miscast, misconceived, mishmash of ideas’. That was the beginning of the new season, and this leisurely follow-up Die Walküre from Barrie Kosky comes near the end of the following season. For the audience watching at Cineworld Basildon (not that there were many of us) some negatives remained but there were many positives. Kosky’s ideas for his conflict between nature and science appears of have coalesced and now – as he explained – focusses on the ecological catastrophe of the Australian bushfires of 2019-20 and Erda as the ancient Mother Earth figure reliving her past.
Compared to Rheingold most of Walküre is like a costumed semi-staging, and The Royal Opera’s Director of Opera, Oliver Mears, described Kosky’s wish for his mise-en-scène was to ‘not clutter it with … too much set’ and I muttered (to myself) ‘means cheap’ and indeed – with one major exception – I was proved right. The first act is played out against a stage deep wall of burnt wooden planks with a couple of doors and a very obvious hilt of a sword embedded in it. A table and chairs of burnt wood is brought on and taken off at some point and that is about it apart from the fact Hunding and Siegmund appeared to tear into their meal of chicken and potatoes with relish. Again the naked, elderly Erda is there at the start and Siegmund is fleeing through the storm by circling her at the front of the stage. The costumes for Siegmund (a couple of hoodies) and Sieglinde (initially in a floral dress) seem sourced from a charity shop whilst a vengeful Hunding is a gun-toting security guard, if oddly instead of just shooting Siegmund at the end of the second act he chases him around with a large axe!
It is clear from the start that Kosky will not allow anyone to stand still – or even upright – for any length of time it seems; the injured, bloodied Siegmund clearly has PTSD from his recent experiences and the physically intimidated and abused Sieglinde is on the edge of the nervous breakdown she will eventually have towards the end of the second act. Later neither Hunding (briefly), Wotan, Fricka, nor – the particularly hyperactive – Brünnhilde and her sister Valkyries ever stop rushing about. For the start of Act II there is a mostly bare stage, five tall streetlamps and Wotan is in a business suit, Brünnhilde wears a simple blue dress covered by a dark coat, Fricka flounces around in faux (I hope!) fur and is dressed as if on her way to a gala. She arrived in a vintage Rolls Royce with the Spirit of Ecstasy replaced by a ram’s head!
Later a scene change needs a curtain to descend before we see the felled World Ash Tree from Rheingold with the knot holes for characters to disappear into and emerge from; and dry ice and finally blood, to come out of them. Sieglinde in particular clambers all over the huge, blackened trunk and enters it and I couldn’t imagine Lise Davidsen (the original singer cast) doing much of that, and so – fortuitously because of Davidsen’s pregnancy – Kosky got a willing replacement in Natalya Romaniw (who learnt the role in two months apparently).
The last act has a single large tree on an otherwise bare and dark stage again. According to Kosky ‘the twigs and branches all represent human bodies, fingers and hands, there’s a human element to these trees’. There are seven added silent Valkyries (or are they mortuary attendants?) who wheel in on trolleys the charred remains of dead heroes for the jubilant, cavorting, bloodied Valkyries. (Earlier during the Act II Todesverkündigung or ‘Annunciation of Death’ Siegmund embraces and ultimately rips apart one of those corpses.) Brünnhilde gets consigned to that single tree and the translation is changed from her sleeping on a rock to ‘this mighty tree’! Finally, we see where most of any money was spent as (spoiler alert!) the tree magically (!) catches alight in a true coup de théâtre.
I was annoyed before about the naked Erda figure and am again especially as Peter Jones’s camerawork lingered a little too voyeuristically on her when it wasn’t entirely necessary. I have no issue with nudity on the stage but with longer hair Erda – this time a valiant Illona Linthwaite – could appear more discreetly naked, though without making her look like The Addams Family’s Cousin Itt of course. Yes, be naked at the beginning and at the end but in between if Erda does reappear then why not do more than just have her in the Rolls Royce as Fricka’s uniformed chauffeur. Erda does not need to bring on a basket of flowers during Siegmund’s ‘Spring Song’ nor be at the other end of Nothung when it gets withdrawn from the wall. During the last act Erda sits (naked of course) within the trunk of the tree for a long time and all I could think was please give her a puzzle book to keep her occupied.
Reading so far you might be expecting a too negative review but let me state now there was possibly some of the best acting I have ever seen in more than 50 years of going to opera, and Wagner particularly. As Kosky said, ‘If you have the right people that can work like actors … you should ultimately forget you are watching opera and experience genuine music theatre where the motivations and emotional landscape is believable and complex.’
That it certainly was when watching his Walküre in closeup on the screen, though whether that radiated to the back rows of the amphitheatre of the Royal Opera House, perhaps somebody could let me know? Whilst the acting was uniformly superb – well, perhaps Fricka was a little too histrionic – the singing was crucially let down in the title role. This was the fifth Walküre in two weeks and I hope it was just tiredness that caused Elisabet Strid’s pitch issues and her inability to accurately hit some of the highest notes of Brünnhilde’s opening ‘Hojotohos’ (which she attempted to cover up by bounding around the stage). On the other hand, her Act III ‘War es so schmählich’ – lying more in a mezzo range – was deeply affecting. Elsewhere there was great singing and acting: Christopher Maltman was a revelation as Wotan with his excellence as a lieder singer making his Wotan exceptionally nuanced and multifaceted. There is, to begin with, a certain cunning, then vulnerability, anger, regret and the sense of loss. Maltman’s singing of Wotan’s farewell to his errant daughter was three-dimensional, involving and heartbreaking and recalled the wonderful Michael Volle in the role (there can be no higher praise).
In roles debuts as the reuniting twins, Siegmund and Sieglinde, Stanislas de Barbeyrac and Natalya Romaniw definitely had all the youthfulness and energy Kosky wanted. Romaniw – though only new to Sieglinde – has huge Wagner potential and is clearly a future Brünnhilde. Hers was a captivating performance, and Romaniw’s consummate acting revealed with great nuance her fearfulness over an abusive marriage, as well her burgeoning recognition of a long-lost twin brother. Romaniw’s singing had power, radiance and tonal beauty and culminated in an emotionally expressive ‘O hehrstes Wunder!’ From de Barbeyrac as Siegmund we heard a style of Wagner singing which I thought had been virtually lost. Some commentators have reminisced about the legendary Alberto Remedios in the role for Sir Reginald Goodall and English National Opera. Whilst Remedios was a one-off as a Wagner singer because of the Italianate nature of his voice, de Barbeyrac undoubtably has an eloquently lyrical heldentenor sound. I would look forward to seeing and hearing him again when such an angst-ridden performance wasn’t demanded of him by the director. I had enjoyed (review here) his Siegmund in concert for Yannick Nézet-Séguin which had all of the admirable qualities his voice displayed here.
In the smaller roles Soloman Howard glowered menacingly as Hunding and sang with his usual sepulchral bass which matched his character’s malevolent physicality. Perhaps Marina Prudenskaya’s Fricka was rather too overwrought – sometimes less is more – but she commanded attention with her vocal intensity and statuesque appearance. Last but not least, the Valkyries sang spiritedly and were an unusually physically fearsome octet.
As for Sir Antonio Pappano and the Royal Opera House Orchestra, Walküre sounded splendid through the cinema loudspeakers. His account was scrupulously detailed, had great sensitivity and a heightened sense of drama but not enough – at least for me – forward momentum. I didn’t record any timings (help anyone?) but it seemed long, though conversely with a delayed transmission in the cinema – where we didn’t have the ridiculous 80-minute second interval – five hours went by quickly thanks to the captivating cast.
Jim Pritchard
Featured Image: Elisabet Strid (Brünnhilde), Christopher Maltman (Wotan) and Valkyries © RBO/Monika Rittershaus
Creatives:
Director – Barrie Kosky
Set designer – Rufus Didwiszus
Costume designer – Victoria Behr
Lighting designer – Alessandro Carletti
Fight director – Philip D’Orléans
Intimacy co-ordinator – Anna Morrissey
Cast:
Wotan – Christopher Maltman
Brünnhilde – Elisabet Strid
Sieglinde – Natalya Romaniw
Siegmund – Stanislas de Barbeyrac
Fricka – Marina Prudenskaya
Hunding – Soloman Howard
Helmwige – Maida Hundeling
Ortlinde – Katie Lowe
Gerhilde – Lee Bisset
Waltraute – Claire Barnett-Jones
Siegrune – Catherine Carby
Rossweisse – Alison Kettlewell
Grimgerde – Monika-Evelin Liiv
Schwertleite – Rhonda Browne
Erda – Illona Linthwaite (silent)
Actors: Clare Almond, Lucy Brenchley, Clea Godsill, Maria Leon, Virginia Poli, Nadia Sadiq, Jay Yule
Having watched this with a small Catalan audience, who appeared stunned into silence by the performance – perhaps also by the effort of translating the subtitles in Castilian Spanish while listening in German – I agree with Jim Pritchard. Especially about Erda – it did seem voyeuristic, that lingering camera, & that’s one of the issues I have with filmed opera. If I had been at the back of the stalls in Covent Garden I might have felt differently.
What no one has yet questioned in any review I’ve seen is whether it is acceptable in the twenty-first century for all the villains to be interpreted by Black actors. This made me feel very uncomfortable, especially the wife-beating Hunding. [edited]
JP replies for S&H: Thank you and a wonderful advantage of filmed opera however is that you got to see it in Catalonia. I think there was a problem with some of the camerawork. You are probably right that at the back of the stalls – if they didn’t know by now – they couldn’t probably tell if Erda was naked or somehow (more discretely) just appearing to be naked. I remember in the 1990s the furore over Richard Jones’s Rhinemaidens in fat suits, fast-forward to 2025 and everything is rather quiet on this current issue.
Were the actors naked at some point?
Jim for S&H: Nobody else is naked on the stage, even when Sieglinde gets the top of her dress ripped open and pulled down by Siegmund in all their excitement at the end of the first act and her back is to the audience it appears she had not forgotten to put on her (M&S probably) bra.
Firstly, thank you for this lovely review Jim.
Regarding the nudity, it was more voyeuristic than would be witnessed sitting at the ROH. However, as a women in her late-60s, I say bravo to Ilona and wonder if the reaction would have been the same for lingering nudity from a much younger performer.
JP for S&H: I would agree ‘bravo’ for any artist not-so-young or young, yet my concerns would have been the same since – as presented – it was unnecessary and distracted from the story-telling.
Just returned from seeing this opera and was so impressed by the high degree of dramatic acting and movement from all cast members.
Agree about the Erda comments.
Too many unnecessary close-ups which I found distracting.
Father/daughter farewell scene at the end of the third act was so well directed and heart-wrenching to watch. Wotan was reluctant to leave his daughter.
Overall the singing was excellent.
De Barbeyrac’s beautiful voiced Siegmund was full of inner torture and turmoil, so well acted.
Hated the Act I set which was a non-event.
Bravo to Kosky and the team for a riveting second opera in the cycle and I eagerly await Siegfried.