So the problem with Die Walküre, if you think it's a problem, is that although it's something like an hour and a half longer than Rheingold, very little actually happens. Rheingold is full of incident, but the follow-up is not, so much. For the record, I don'tthink it's a problem; I think Walküre is spectacular; easily better than its predecessor. What it lacks in stuff happening, it makes up for with high emotional content that wasn't really present in the first installment.
So Siegmund is being pursued by...pursuers. He takes refuge in a house in the woods, where he meets Sieglinde, who takes him in and takes care of him. Her brutal husband Hunding comes home; Siegmund explains that his life has been kind of a bummer: when he was small his mother was killed and his sister disappeared; more recently, he fought with the family of a girl being forced into a loveless marriage, and that family and its supporters are who he's fleeing from now. Hunding reveals that he's one of them and says that he can stay the night, but tomorrow he is going to fuck his shit up. Sieglinde drugs Hunding's drink and reveals to Siegmund a sword that someone (Wotan, in fact, their father) had stuck in the tree, and can only be removed by the destined one, who is him. The two realize that they're brother and sister, and it's a little comical to me how utterly without any kind of hesitation or angst they are about entering into an incestuous relationship. Meanwhile, Wotan instructs his favorite daughter, Brünnhilde, to protect Siegmund against Hunding, but then his wife Fricka shows up, in her capacity as guardian of marriage, demanding justice for Hunding. Wotan is not keen on this; he needs a hero who--because he, Wotan, as patron of oaths and bonds, can't do it himself--will, of his own free will, recover the ring (because, he later explains, Alberich is after it, and if he manages to get it, we are fucked). Fricka counters this by noting that Siegmund isn't in any meaningful sense independent; he's been heavily manipulated by Wotan. Unable to counter this argument, he reluctantly agrees not to intervene in Siegmund's favor, and countermands his previous order to Brünnhilde. Siegmund and Sieglinde stagger in, and she faints from exhaustion. Brünnhilde appears to Siegmund and says, hey, time to die and go to Valhalla! He refuses if he can't go with Sieglinde, and threatens to kill her rather than be separated from her, and is that really what you call love? Hmm. Regardless, it impresses Brünnhilde, who makes the fatal decision to disobey her father and help him anyway. But when the battle with Hunding begins, Wotan appears and breaks Siegmund's sword, allowing Hunding to kill him. Brunhilde flees with Sieglinde and the sword fragments. Wotan mourns Siegmund, kills Hunding with casual contempt, and heads after Brünnhilde. She runs to where the other valkyries are busy gathering dead heroes. She asks for their help, but they are less than helpful. Sieglinde wakes up and wants to die, but Brünnhilde convinces her that she needs to stay alive for her unborn child's sake and tells her where to go to avoid Wotan. She leaves, and Wotan appears. He resolves to put her into a deep sleep until whatever man first finds her claims her as his wife, and it's extremely interesting to me that his punishment is so explicitly to make her the victim of a patriarchal social order. You'd think that might be a somewhat tendentious feminist interpretation, but nope, it's not even subtext; it's right there in the text itself. She begs him to at least surround her with fire so that only a man without fear can save her (WHO COULD THAT BE?), to which he eventually accedes. He puts her to sleep, summons flames, curtain.
Man. What a thing, what a thing. Once again, I watched both the Schenk and the Lepage productions. And this time, somewhat to my surprise, I have to give it pretty unambiguously to the Lepage. They were both good, but the man with the giant, weird machine won me over. But how?
Die Walküre has much less elaborate production requirements than Das Rheingold. You have the interior of a cottage, some indeterminate outdoor place, a mountaintop, and that's all. Further, the only really fancy visual effect called for is the flames at the very end. Both productions, actually, benefit from this. The Schenk doesn't have to employ any big, rickety-looking sets; the whole thing is generally better-looking (with no weird, distracting costumes, either). Of course, the Lepage doesn't necessarily need to get all fancy either; I was wondering in fact how it was going to make use of this big ol' machine. And the answer is: pretty well, actually. I don't know whether it justifies its existence or not, but it doesn't embarrass itself. In the first and second acts, the slats are used to create the effect of a forest, and it honestly looks really impressive. I'm not quite sure how they pulled that off. And the famous third-act opening (featuring that one tune, now what is it called?), featuring valkyries riding the slats as they move up and down to simulate horses, is just...good. The only place where I thought the Schenk production was really, unambiguously better was the ecstatic first-act climax where Siegmund announces that now it's Spring, and the whole background lifts up to reveal the green growing things. In the Lepage, there's just a green light, which doesn't quite do it for me. The Lepage also does have one persistent problem, which is that when characters are standing in front of slats with images projected onto them, they look like they're turning transparent. It's not a huge deal.
Still, the productions aren't really the point; they're both fine. It is mainly a question of casting. I have opinions about this! As Brünnhilde, Hildegard Behrens and Deborah Voigt are pretty comparable; there's not much to choose between. They even look very similar. But as for the rest of the cast...well, in general, I think that Wotan has a better, more rewarding role in this than in Rheingold. I liked James Morris before, and I like him better now. But I also like Bryn Terfel better. A lot better, in fact; I've really warmed to the singer in the role. He's especially good with the emotional aspects of the character; I may possibly actually have had tears in my eyes during his final farewell to his daughter (although honestly, if I think about it rationally, I'm not entirely sure that the opera actually provides sufficient justification for why he just hasto punish her as he does). I'd say Morris and Terfel are about equal in my estimation here.
But if it's a toss-up Wotan-wise, the Lepage production clearly wins out in every other way (okay okay, maybe Hans-Peter König is a bit too jovial even when he's meant to be menacing as Hunding, but that's a small part; whatever). I really don't want to denigrate Jessye Norman and Gary Lakes as Sieglinde and Siegmund; they do a perfectly good job, especially Norman. But man...Lepage has Eva-Maria Westbroek and Jonas Kaufmann in those roles, which hardly seems like a fair fight (also, it's a tiny thing, but I appreciated the way they'd been given similar hair, emphasizing their siblinghood). And, once again, STEPHANIE FUCKING BLYTHE as Fricka. She rocks that role hard (and she also gets a totally badass throne with statues of rams for arms). I've kind of half-convinced that she might actually genuinely be Fricka, in real life.
Rheingoldwas great and all, but this one is much more emotionally powerful--and, as we know, high emotion is kind of opera's thing. I find myself feeling very swept up in this drama, and I am very excited to see it through. Oh yeah, and one other thing: I inadvertently paused the Schenk production at the worst or best possible moment to show Jessye Norman (who, to be clear, is quite beautiful) at her absolute least flattering, and I feel compelled to share it with the world:
Yikes.
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