Die Walküre

I love all four operas of the Ring Cycle, and while my personal favourite is Siegfried, Die Walkure is a close second and perhaps the most accessible of the four. Previously I had seen the 1990 Met, 2011 Met, 1980 Bayreuth, 1992 Bayreuth and 2008/9 Valencia productions, and especially 1990 and 1992 I put every single one of those over this one. Of the Stuttgart performances of the Ring, Gotterdammerung was the least problematic to me, though still problematic. Die Walkure is not a complete travesty and better than their Siegfried, which was disgusting in my view.

Like I said with Das Rheingold, it does get brownie points for the magnificent music, as is always the case with Wagner, and a couple of good performances. Best of the lot is the affecting Sieglinde of Angela Denoke, though, although I hated his costuming, Robert Gambill has a great virile voice as Siegmund and is a good actor. There's also a very well sung and acted Fricka from Tichina Vaughn, if not quite my definition of thrilling.

However, Jan Hendrik Rootering is a very unconvincing Wotan. And no I don't mean his appearance. He is never firm or authoritative enough in the role, in fact he looks very uncomfortable especially in Act 2, and his voice has a weak-pushed-up-bass quality to it, the necessary high notes for the scene in Act 2 between him and Brunnhilde and Wotan's Farewell sound seriously strained. Renate Behle didn't work for me as Brunnhilde either. Her voice was too shrill for my liking with some big notes missed, she has a bad habit of contorting her face at times and her small stature and constantly buckling knees is not really Walkure material.

Musically, it is not bad, with the orchestra quite powerful when they need to be though I got the sense I was listening to a version of Walkure rather than a true Wagnerian sound, but the conducting often plods such as in Wotan's Act 2 monologue and some parts of the music before climaxes come across as overly-bombastic, almost as if he was rushing to get to them. The Walkures sound underpowered, and the staging of Ride of the Valkyries was so ridiculously awful I couldn't help laughing aloud.

Visually, that's another story. The sets look either stark or silly, and really don't reflect the mood of the score often. This is particularly true in Act 3. The costumes aren't much better, Siegmund's and the Walkures are just horrible for my tastes, but it's nothing compared to Hunding and sadly the performance in this role was nothing to write about either(alright I wasn't expecting another Salminen or Holle but at least give us a bass that didn't sound underpowered). Dramatically this Walkure never really comes to life, Ride of the Valkyries is very ineptly done, but that is not all. Wotan's Farewell, one of the highlights of any of Wagner's work, is nowhere near as monumental as it should be, they really have got to do better than candles for the Magic Fire. The scenes between Brunnhilde and Wotan as far as I'm concerned were emotionally stillborn. Some of the staging doesn't make sense even, like in Act 1 with the sword.

The technical values(picture and sound quality) were fine though. The video directing is also not bad, few of the scenes here are as badly handled as Alberich's curse from Rheingold in this respect. All in all, pretty poor. 4/10 Bethany Cox

This production, directed by Cristof Nel is like one of those challenges they give to eager young apprentices on daytime reality shows: "We want you to stage Die Walküre and you have a budget of €50 to do it on". I imagine most of the budget was spent on the brown wrapping paper and sticky tape to make the Valkyries' wings. It does start off well though, in the meeting between Sieglinde and Siegmund. To be honest, I have never known this scene to fail. It just oozes eroticism. Angela Denoke is a sensuous Sieglinde and Robert Gambill is a virile Siegmund. I suppose the fact that Denoke wears just a nylon slip makes me think that it resembles something by Tennessee Williams although I could not, for the life of me, work out why Gambill wears short trousers. In this version it is implied that Wotan has buried his sword, Nothung, not in the ash tree but in Sieglinde's body as we see it projected onto her nylon slip. This makes some sort of sense to me.

In Act II we see Wotan, played as a fat slob by Jan-Hedrik Rootering, and a mini-skirted Brünnhilde, sung by Renate Behle. Behle is the smallest singer I have seen playing this demanding role. She makes a valiant attempt but her face distorts disconcertingly and her knobbly knees buckle under the effort. Tachina Vaughn is more successful as Frike, Wotan's wife and the scene in which she nags him into abandoning his protégé Siegmund is an effective one. So Siegmund has to lose his fight with Hagen, here staged crudely with marionettes.

The ride of the Valkyries, sung by eight mini-skirted women with cardboard wings, looks silly and sounds underpowered with an unimpressive Stuttgart orchestra under conductor Lothar Zagrosek. Worse is to come: the final scene between Wotan and Brünnhilde is played as soap opera. He sits reading a newspaper while she harangues him. There is no hint here of the tender, probably incestuous, feelings that Wotan has for his daughter.