Organization

Bayreuther Festspiele

Conductor

Daniel Barenboim

Stage director

Harry Kupfer

Set designer

Hans Schavernoch

Costume designer

Reinhard Heinrich

Tenor

Poul Elming

Siegmund

Bass

Matthias Hölle

Hunding

Baritone

John Tomlinson

Wotan

Soprano

Nadine Secunde

Sieglinde

Deborah Polaski

Brünnhilde

Anne Evans

Mezzo-soprano

Linda Finnie

Fricka

Eva Johansson

Gerhilde

Rute Simone Flores

Ortlinde

Shirley Close

Waltraute

Contralto

Hitomi Katagiri

Schwertleite

Eva-Maria Bundschuh

Helmwige

Hebe Dijkstra

Rossweisse

Orchestra

Bayreuther Festspielorchester

German

Die Walküre -  (The Valkyrie)

Germany

Wotan dreams of a free man who, unbound by his contracts, can free the gods and the world from the curse of gold. He begets the Wälsung couple Siegmund and Sieglinde and the Valkyries with primordial mother Erda; at their head: Brünnhilde. Siegmund and Sieglinde, now married to Hunding, find, recognize and love each other. Siegmund wins the sword Nothung to fight Hunding. Wotan's favorite daughter Brünnhilde is supposed to choose victory for Siegmund. But Fricka, outraged by the adultery and the incest of the twins, demands that Wotan kill Siegmund. Wotan gives in. Brünnhilde has to announce the death of Siegmund, but stands in front of him in the fight. Wotan himself intervenes and Siegmund falls. Brünnhilde rescues Sieglinde, who is carrying a Wälsung in her lap. Wotan must the disobedient Brünnhilde, "his bold,

Conductor Daniel Barenboim, director Harry Kupfer, set designer Hans Schavernoch and costume designer Reinhard Heinrich came to Bayreuth in 1988 to realize their vision of Wagner's "Ring". They consistently turned away from the time the work was created and conceived their staging as "a critique of human history, of the entire cultural development, at the end of which we are heavily involved" (Kupfer).

The Kupfer team set Wagner's "critique of man's rage for destruction, of lovelessness and alienation" (Kupfer), which is rooted in Germanic mythology, in a present that harbors a past and a future at the same time. The space for this pre-time, simultaneity and post-time is the "road of history" on which power struggles and love troubles occur and which leads us directly into the depths of the human soul.

"Under Barenboim, the music is exquisite. Especially the narrative power of Rheingold, the descriptions of the above- and below-ground events run off with great musical imagery in a fascinating variety of colors... All roles are again cast with sharp characters." (Die Welt, 7/29/92)

"Harry Kupfer and the protagonists brought the story as close to the audience as an opera can ever do." (Münchner Merkur, July 29, 1992)

"With admirable rigor of the means of expression in the ring, he creates an opportunity to present the fullness of the forms in an exemplary manner and to clarify the basic questions of the 20th century without blatant one-sidedness." (Stuttgarter News, 29.7.92)

"You can already feel it: saying goodbye will be a difficult one. Harry Kupfer's production of Richard Wagner's Ring des Nibelungen has by no means lost any of its expressiveness over the years... The meeting of past, present and future is more than a vision. After Rheingold und Walküre it is beyond doubt that Harry Kupfer has presented what is perhaps the most important interpretation of the mammoth drama after Patrice Chéreau." (West German General, 29.7.92)

"Harry Kupfer's production of the Ring, intellectually well-founded, comedy-inspired, psychologically motivated, became the third important interpretation in Neubayreuth after Wieland Wagner and Patrice Chéreau. These three interpretations alone reveal the variety of scenic possibilities; they open up the widest spectrum in the stylistic pluralism of the today's music theater..." (Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, 30.7.92)

"Kupfer overheard things from Wagner that he perhaps could not even have imagined." (The mirror)

"Copper liberates us, if not all the time, then in striking scenes from our superego by enmeshing us in the story of the Ring of the Nibelung. No singer in Bayreuth needs to ask what this old myth still means today who lives his art, and basically no listener either." (FAZ)

"Bayreuth can boast, much to the fury of its ancient Wagnerians, an apocalyptic Ring interpretation for the ecologically conscious late eighties: Twilight of technology instead of Twilight of the Gods." (Profile, Vienna)

"The detailed work on this ring has been going on since the start in 1988, and it has served in the Bayreuth workshop to bring the quality of the performance to the limits of what is achievable." (Der Tagesspiegel, Berlin)

Public

The Valkyrie

Approved

Production booklet

Further reading