Die Walküre

As a deadly storm rages through the forest, an exhausted warrior seeks shelter in a stranger’s house, where an unloved and desperate wife feels an instant connection with this broken hero. But higher powers watch and judge, and Siegmund and Sieglinde’s forbidden love will have consequences on a cosmic scale. Die Walküre (1870) is the second of the four operas that make up Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, but it’s also the starting point of the main story, and for many listeners it’s the most moving episode of the whole gigantic drama. The story is based on ancient Germanic and Norse legends (and in Act II, the god Wotan intervenes, testing divine law against the power of nature itself), but the emotions and ideas that Wagner explores are unmistakably human: by turns tender, searching, and overwhelmingly passionate. A father betrays his son; a goddess discovers her own humanity; and the Valkyrie (warrior-goddess) Brünnhilde emerges as one of the most complex and courageous female protagonists in all of opera. Unforgettable moments abound, whether Act I’s rapturous love duet or the famous “Ride of the Valkyries.” But it’s the raw emotion of the closing scenes—where Wagner takes us inside the mind of a god at the precise moment that his heart breaks—that leaves many listeners moved to tears and shaken to the soul. About Wagner’s Ring Cycle The four operas of Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen constitute one of the supreme achievements in Western art. Composed between 1848 and 1876, and first performed over four nights in a specially built opera house in Bayreuth, Germany, in 1878, the Ring cycle brings together every aspect of theatre—music, poetry, acting and visual imagery—to create what Wagner called a “complete artwork”: a universal drama of all-embracing richness and depth. Based on ancient Germanic myths, it’s a true modern epic: an eternal story of love and power, humanity and nature, told in music of overwhelming originality, insight and emotion.