Die Walküre by Wagner, Van (2022/2022), Dirigent Cornelius Meister, Opernhaus, Stuttgart, Duitsland

"Now it's just getting started!" Richard Wagner promised when, after completing Rheingold, he devoted himself to the Valkyrie and the family-incestuous shallows of his world drama, which will ultimately lead to Götterdämmerung. Of all parts of the ring, the Valkyrie is the least about external action and all the more about inner processes, about the hatching of ideas and desires. Basic considerations for the entire tetralogy can be illustrated here in a very small space. Just like the plot of the entire Ring, that of the Valkyrie is composed of heterogeneous elements: the love story of the twins Sieglinde and Siegmund as well as Wotan's search for a way out of the entanglements of the contracts entered into. Instead of forcing the heterogeneity of these elements into a unity, the different worlds should remain different worlds. "The essence of reality", according to Wagner, lies in "infinite multiplicity". Accordingly, in the new Ring of the Stuttgart State Opera, the teams of directors change not only bit by bit, but in Die Walküre even by act, in order not to narrow the complex processes, references and foreshadowings to one reading, but to exhibit them in their multifaceted nature. Three translations instead of one interpretation. The Dutch theater collective Hotel Modern will create a live film with miniature landscapes and figures on stage and tell about the human world of the first act. In the tradition of Wieland Wagner, the light artist Urs Schönebaum deals with the visualization of underlying structures, while the installation artist Ulla von Brandenburg will implement the valkyrie ride and fire magic of the third act as a choreography for the stage technology. In this sense: Hojotoho! Heia-Ha!