Die Walküre

Staged for a festival performance of the entire four-opera Der Ring des Nibelungen cycle at Weimar, Germany in 2008, Die Walküre focuses on the forbidden love of Siegmund and Sieglinde, which will result in the birth of the hero Siegfried, and the disobedience of Wotan's favorite Valkyrie, Brünnhilde, whom he punishes by making mortal and leaving her asleep within the magic circle of fire. Like the recent Ring from Stuttgart (see VL-7/04), this outing represents a decent provincial take on an operatic Everest, but one that doesn't measure up to older productions from Bayreuth and other major houses. Conductor Carl St. Clair, a pupil of Leonard Bernstein, seems to have the measure of the score, but the orchestra doesn't provide the lushness the music demands, and the vocals vary, with Erin Caves and Kirsten Blanck strong as Siegmund and Sieglinde, but Renatus Mészár is a wooly Wotan and Catherine Foster a sometimes squawky Brünnhilde. Michael Schultz uses odd stage direction—setting the Ride of the Valkyries in a girls' dormitory, for instance—and unnecessarily adds a semi-sung recapitulation of Das Rheingold before Wagner's music starts. Although the camerawork is good, the production design diminishes the entire effort, with the action played on a virtually bare stage and the costumes a ragtag assemblage of drab 19th-century garb. Presented in Dolby Digital 5.1 and PCM stereo, this is optional, at best. Aud: C, P. (F. Swietek)