The Valkyries Ride Again

We’ve been won over. What once made us grumpy now makes us happy. On Monday night, we were thoroughly taken in by the second installment in Wagner’s Ring Cycle: Die Walküre.

It surprised us, a little, to enjoy the performance as much as we did. But as with Das Rheingold, the singing was spectacular. This is truly a star-studded cast: Jane Eaglen, Margaret Jane Wray, Stephanie Blythe – it’s not every day you get to hear singers of this caliber on the same stage together. These women have huge, Wagnerian voices that fill the hall with rich, warm sound. The men are very good, as well, but there’s a female influence in both the story and the music of this opera which eclipses the men. Margaret Jane Wray was especially good (and our favorite) as Sieglinde. She gave a well-wrought emotionally affecting performance.

The production was also wonderful. Stephen Wadsworth, the stage director for the Ring, has a way of creating meaningful movement on stage. The singers weren’t just moving for the sake of moving, their movement was motivated by what they were singing. And when they didn’t move (a lot of this music is big, stand-and-sing, get-the-sound-over-the-orchestra music), it didn’t matter – the music and the drama kept going.

The story of Die Walküre moves faster than Das Rheingold. You can read a synopsis here (or, in twenty words or less: twins, incest, gods, mortals, magical swords, fight scenes, defiance, father-daughter issues, removal of godhood, Valkyries, enchanted sleep, fire). We think what surprised us the most is how quickly the story moved along, and how easy it was to understand and even identify with the characters. Even when the narrative repeated, it revealed a new psychological level of the story. Sometimes, the characters understand their weaknesses and can foresee their own downfall; other times, they can’t. Both instances are beautifully supported by Wagner’s music.

And the music! What were we thinking all those years when we thought we didn’t like Wagner? It completely transported us, and for whole minutes we were lost in the world co-created by the music and the production. The story can seem preposterous (twins falling in love with each other? Valkyries, who fly through the air transporting fallen warriors?), but the music humanizes it. These outlandish characters become people we can relate to, and when that happens, it’s breathtaking. Wagner also used a nifty little trick called “leitmotifs,” which appear all throughout the Cycle. Leitmotifs are basically theme songs, associated with various characters, things, or themes, and serve, in this case, to make the Cycle a coherent whole. (“Ride of the Valkyries” is probably the most famous; Elmer Fudd sings “Kill the wabbit” to its tune.) Even Valhalla has a leitmotif, which Seattlest was able to pick out (making us feel our BA in music is coming to some good).

Tonight, Siegfried. We hear he falls in love with a few of his aunts.