Why I Love ‘Die Walküre’
My favourite opera company, Pacific Opera Victoria, in Victoria, Vancouver Island, British Columbia in Canada, is putting on its first ever production of Richard Wagner’s majestic ‘Die Walküre’, the second part of his great tetralogy (a compound work made up of four separate works), ‘Der Ring des Nibelungen.’ This has inspired me to re-examine the opera and reflect on the part it has played in my life. I first heard it in the King’s Theatre, Glasgow in December 1971 as part of Scottish Opera’s first ever Ring Cycle. I heard it again at Covent Garden in 2004, in Seattle in 2009 and at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 2011. I sang Hunding in concert performances of Act 1, with Kathryn Harries and Alberto Remedios in the 1990s, and then Wotan in the first Longborough Ring, which we put together over several years from 1998-2002. During my career, I sang Fafner and Hagen in the other operas, and so was able to watch ‘Die Walküre’ on my nights off, in places as diverse as Limerick, Birmingham, London, Seattle and Belfast. My Wotans were in the cut-down version created by Jonathan Dove for the City of Birmingham Touring Opera production in 1990/91, which was used for the Longborough ‘Ring.’ I could never have sung the full role of Wotan in a big theatre, as my voice is not designed for it, but in the Dove version, it was very successful, and provided me with the thrill of a lifetime (and hopefully some of the audience too!).
Wagner started work on his enormous Ring project in 1848, writing the libretto first, and completing the ‘Die Walküre’ text in July 1852. He finished the music for this opera in March 1856, but due to the long hiatus in composing between when he left Siegfried in the forest, during which he wrote ‘Tristan und Isolde’ and ‘Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg’, until when Siegfried kills the dragon Fafner, many years passed before the whole work was completed. Against his better judgement, Wagner was forced by his sponsor, King Ludwig II of Bavaria, to have the work performed at the National Court Theatre in Munich in 1870. Wagner had insisted that the ‘Ring’ should only be performed as a tetralogy, but Ludwig was not someone who one could easily refuse. The premiere in Munich was a star-studded event, with among others, Liszt, Brahms, Saint-Saëns and the violin virtuoso Joseph Joachim present in the theatre, and it was very well received. However, it was not until 1876 that the whole cycle was performed in its entirety, at the brand new Festspielhaus in Bayreuth.
Die Walküre begins many years after the end of ‘Das Rheingold’. Wotan, King of the Gods, has won the all-powerful ring by tricking Alberich, the dwarf who has renounced love to forge it, but he has almost immediately lost it again to the Giant brothers Fasolt and Fafner, in return for the freedom of the Goddess of Love and Youth, Freia. The Earth Goddess, Erda, warned him just in time to escape the curse of the ring, and at the end of ‘Rheingold’ we see the gods marching into their new fortress, Valhalla.
In the interim, Wotan has gone back to find out more from the all-seeing Erda, finding the time, en passant, to father Brünnhilde, and another eight Valkyries! On his travels, as he attempts to find a way to get the ring back, and more importantly to stop Alberich getting it back, he dallies with mortal women, one of whom bears the twins Siegmund and Sieglinde. Separated as children, Siegmund develops into a great warrior, but one forever crushed by fate, sad and woeful. Sieglinde ends up married to the vicious Hunding, but recalls a day when a stranger passed by, and thrust a sword into a tree, where it has stayed ever since. Many have tried to pull it out without success, and so it remains in the centre of Hunding’s woodland house, waiting for a hero to claim it.
Act 1 begins with an exhausted Siegmund pitching up at Hunding’s house, asking for a drink of water. Sieglinde, who is on her own, Hunding having gone to a family event, offers the stranger water. Hunding returns, grim and menacing, and asks the stranger who he is and why he is here? He replies that he has wandered all over for years, but recently killed some men who had been ill-treating a woman and fled their family’s vengeance. Hunding reveals that he has himself just returned from vowing vengeance on the murderer of some of his family, only to find the fugitive in his house. The code of hospitality forces him to offer shelter to the fugitive, but in the morning, his sword will avenge the wrong. He pushes the woman out, and retires for the night, leaving the stranger to ponder his fate by the fireside, alone. He sees something glinting across the room (the mysterious sword) but as the embers burn down, the light dims. In his tale to Hunding, he named himself ‘Wehwalt’ (man of woe), the only name he has ever known. As the stranger told his tale, Hunding seemed to see a similarity between the stranger and his wife, something else to disturb his dreams. Sieglinde slips back in to reveal that she has drugged Hunding and that the stranger must leave. However, this is opera, and, in one extended passage of some of the most glorious music ever written, Sieglinde tells the stranger about the sword, brought by an old man with one eye (Wotan in disguise); they become enraptured with each other, moonlight pours into the house, the stranger pulls out the sword, Sieglinde reveals that he is actually her long lost twin brother, Siegmund, and they fall into each other’s arms.
Act 1 of ‘Die Walküre’ is arguably the finest act that Wagner, or anyone else actually, ever wrote, and with the right singers, it can sweep the audience into a state of utter rapture. I have been very lucky over my career to hear some of the finest performers of my generation singing this act. In 1971, Charles Craig and Leonore Kirschstein, with Bill McCue as Hunding, were magnificent, and with CBTO in 1990/1, we had Paul Wilson and Helen Walker. I was lucky enough to sing Hunding in two separate concerts of Act 1 with Kathryn Harries and the wonderful Alberto Remedios, a Liverpudlian docker who had been discovered to possess a fantastic voice, and who had sung Siegmund and Siegfried in the iconic English language Ring Cycle at ENO in the 60s and 70s. When I was understudying Fafner and Hagen at Seattle in 2009, I heard a young Stuart Skelton, with Margaret Jane Wray, and understudying La Roche in ‘Capriccio’ at the New York Met in 2011, I heard Jonas Kaufmann and Eva Maria Westbroek. I wish I had heard James King or Jon Vickers, the two finest exponents of the role in the 50s, 60s and 70s, but you can’t have everything, and they are at least on record, although poor Vickers was captured on a live Bayreuth performance in, I think, 1958, when at the end of the act, he splits the big top A at the end wide open, perhaps showing us that even the best can screw up!
Act 2 is maybe even better than Act 1, but I may be biased, as it contains one of the great monologues of all opera, Wotan’s explanation to Brünnhilde of the story of the Ring, his part in it, and how, despite his own immense power, he is powerless to alter the inexorable path of Fate. When I sang the role at Longborough, I was delighted to find that this great narrative had been kept in its entirety, totally uncut. Given that much of the rest of the Tetralogy was heavily cut in the original Dove CBTO version, to allow it to play over two days and not four, this was a huge relief. At Longborough, we played over four days, despite the cuts, apart from one marathon Saturday, when we sang ‘Das Rheingold’ and ‘Die Walküre’ on the same day, as it had played in Birmingham. It nearly killed me, as it had almost done for the Wotan in Birmingham, but I managed to persuade Longborough that it was a crazy idea, and that if they wanted to keep their Wotan for future performances, it shouldn’t happen again, and it didn’t!
Before the monologue, we hear the famous Valkyrie motif for the first time, and there is a great confrontation scene between Wotan and his wife, Fricka. He has worked tirelessly (often involving a lot of begetting!) to find a way to keep the ring out of the hands of Alberich, for he knows that if the dwarf regains it, then the end of the world is nigh. Bound by treaties with the giants who took the ring (Fafner, the remaining giant brother, guards it, deep in the forest, having transformed himself by its power into a vicious dragon), Wotan cannot take it back himself, but he has convinced himself that, by siring a hero, and providing him with a sword (Siegmund the hero and Nothung the sword in the tree), he can manufacture a way to get the ring back. He has ordered his favourite daughter, the Valkyrie Brünnhilde, to protect Siegmund in the coming fight with Hunding, and so prepare the way for him to kill the dragon. However, Fricka, who, as well as being Wotan’s long suffering wife, is also the Goddess of marriage, is shocked, outraged and nauseated by the incestuous union of the twins Siegmund and Sieglinde (the end of Act 1 is the unseen prelude to much morally prohibited love-making), and proceeds to demolish Wotan’s paper-thin arguments concerning the outcome of the fight and the whole ring scenario. He is caught in a trap of his own making, and Fricka, the stern wife from Hell for all libidinous husbands, forces him to swear not to help Siegmund, to remove the magic sword, and to forbid Brünnhilde from coming to his aid. It is a scene of brilliant psychological insight, as well as fabulous music. When I sang Wotan at Longborough, I was up against my dear friend and fantastic colleague, Fiona Kimm, as Fricka, and our scene together was absolutely marvellous. This scene continues with the return of Brünnhilde, supposedly for final instructions in the saving of Siegmund, only to turn into the great narration I mentioned earlier with Wotan bearing his soul to his daughter, explaining the trap in which he lies helpless, and foreseeing the end of days. Wotan storms off, reminding his daughter that she must not help Siegmund, threatening dire reprisals if she disobeys. She is aghast at seeing her father so distressed but waits for Siegmund to appear with his sister/lover, and to tell him his death is imminent, at the hands of Hunding. This is the great scene known as ‘Todesverkündigung’ (Annunciation of Death), a brilliant piece of music for tenor and soprano, in which the Valkyrie does what she has always done by announcing imminent death to a warrior hero, promising him eternal life in Valhalla, surrounded by gorgeous girls and endless barrels of beer. Siegmund is unimpressed, especially on learning that he has to leave Sieglinde, and refuses. This has never happened before, but since she knows that Wotan’s secret desire is for Siegmund to live, she decides to disobey her father, and protect her warrior.
This has consequences far beyond a family disagreement, and when Brünnhilde appears to interfere in the battle with Hunding, Wotan returns, shatters the sword and Siegmund is killed. In the dramatic aftermath, the Valkyrie grabs Sieglinde and rushes away with her, leaving Wotan in a furious rage, desperate for revenge on his errant daughter. Thus ends this most phenomenal of acts, and here might be a good time to pause in this narrative for a reviving cuppa, or maybe something stronger!
Cover photo: Pacific Opera Victoria
