THE VALKYRIE • MUNICH OPERA FESTIVAL
★★★★☆☆
Photo: Monika Rittershaus
REVIEW THE VALKYRIE MUNICH: MUSICAL TRIUMPH IN LUKEWARM STAGING
The eagerly awaited continuation of Tobias Kratzer’s Ring interpretation has arrived at this year’s Munich Opera Festival with The Valkyrie. The experience is… complicated!
Following the highly acclaimed Das Rheingold in 2024, expectations were high. Kratzer’s project is regarded as one of the most ambitious attempts at a new European Ring in recent years. His stated ambition is not primarily to shock or revolutionise Wagner, but to tell a coherent story across the four operas. It is an ambition that also characterises Die Walküre, where family history, psychology and relationships feature at least as prominently as gods, heroes and mythology.
Photo: Monika Rittershaus
Musically, the evening is a triumph from the very first bar. Vladimir Jurowski conducts the Bavarian State Opera’s Wagner specialists with impressive intensity. The enormous musical arcs of tension are built up with effortless ease, and one constantly senses the underlying current that makes Wagner so irresistible when it works.
It is fascinating to follow Jurowski’s focused attention to even the smallest details, where phrases are shaped, soundscapes are modelled and tensions are heightened with surgical precision. There is no doubt that the conductor is one of the production’s absolute main attractions.
Photo: Monika Rittershaus
Vocally, the standard is generally high, although some have reservations about Joachim Bäckström’s Siegmund in particular. On the other hand, there is widespread respect for the ensemble’s overall performance and for Ain Anger’s sombre Hunding.
Photo: Monika Rittershaus
Visually, the experience is more mixed. The first act takes place in and around Hunding’s forest cabin, presented as a Christmas postcard from a snow-covered spruce forest until it rotates on the revolving stage and reveals itself to be a 1970s-style prefabricated house of the sort one might rent for a summer holiday. Hunding arrives in a nondescript middle-class car and finds the two siblings engaged in an intimate conversation – an illicit romance is blossoming between the twins, and things are soon to go awry. Kratzer seeks to pull Wagner down from the realm of myth and into a recognisable reality. An obvious conceptual device to make the characters more human and the story more relevant.
Personally, however, I find myself longing for more imagination. The everyday aesthetic becomes so consistent that, for long stretches, it drains the narrative of the magical energy that is part of Wagner’s universe.
The second act continues in the same vein. Much of the action takes place in a forest clearing, laid out like something resembling a playground with a swing set, a playhouse and a climbing frame. Whereas many of the major directors’ Ring productions that I have seen across Europe over the past few years attempt to combat the work’s inherent tediousness with spectacular scenographic devices, Kratzer takes the opposite approach.
Photo: Monika Rittershaus
He strips back the fairy-tale element to focus on the characters’ psychology. It is a choice that has won recognition from several critics, who highlight his ability to create a coherent narrative and shed new light on the relationships between Wotan, Siegmund and Sieglinde through flashbacks and cinematic elements depicting what resembles a fairly ordinary, likeable nuclear family.
Is that enough? Kratzer’s approach is intelligent, well-thought-out and consistent, but there are moments when, as a spectator, one longs for a little more scenic poetry. “Less is more” is clearly the motto. But sometimes, less is simply less.
Kratzer turns up the volume in the third act. The famous Ride of the Valkyries becomes the production’s grand coup de théâtre. The Valkyries ride through the streets of Munich, galloping with swords, spears and shields through bustling streets to the astonishment of unsuspecting passers-by.
Brünnhilde oversees the operation from a helicopter, and the imagery blends references to both Wagner’s own source material and Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. Along the way, modern, fallen heroes are gathered from the city’s streets and parks – a drowned man from the banks of the River Izsar in the Englischer Garten, a cyclist killed in a road accident, pulled from a pool of blood at a crossroads.
Soon, film and live action collide as the dead are led through the opera house’s foyer and onto the stage, where they lie stark naked side by side on autopsy tables for some time – before being ‘rebooted’ one by one as heroes in fresh armour and helmets.
Photo: Monika Rittershaus
It is precisely this sequence that demonstrates Kratzer’s ability to combine humour, historical awareness and narrative ingenuity. Here, the fusion of film and theatre is a success. Kratzer’s legendary Tannhäuser in Bayreuth employed exactly the same trick. To some, this may seem like a repetition.
One could also say that the director is simply further developing his own artistic language.
The finale sums up the production’s strengths and weaknesses. The music is overwhelming. Jurowski elevates the conclusion to a level approaching the sublime. But scenically, the solution is once again remarkably subdued. Brünnhilde is left lying on an Ikea mattress in an almost mundane manner. No rocky outcrop. No ring of fire. Loge lights a tea light and then a cigarette. That’s it!
At the same time, filmed flashback sequences suggest that Kratzer is piecing together a much larger narrative jigsaw puzzle, which will only make full sense once the entire Ring is complete. Frika’s self-assured smile as she watches a burning house in a filmed closing sequence points towards a sort of feminist takeover. We shall see. Siegfried premieres in October and Götterdämmerung at next summer’s festival.
Overall, I agree with the German media’s positive reception. Die Walküre is intelligent, ambitious and told with great insight into the human dimensions of the work.
Nevertheless, I’m left with the feeling that the production is stronger on paper than on stage. Musically, the evening is nothing short of sensational. Visually, it is thought-provoking, but not always equally gripping. I therefore find myself somewhere between enthusiasm and reservation: four stars for a Valkyrie that is undoubtedly important and intelligent, but which, for me, lacks the magic that transforms a solid opera experience into an unforgettable one.
