Die Walküre

Richard Wagner composed Die Walküre as the second of the four operas that make up his monumental music-drama cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen, inspired by the medieval Nibelungenlied and Old Norse mythology. Wotan, the chief of the gods, fathers twins—Siegmund and Sieglinde—with a mortal woman. The twins later conceive a child together, a union that Wotan believes will secure his power. However, his wife Fricka, the guardian of marriage and its traditional values, opposes his plans and demands Siegmund’s death. Reluctantly, Wotan submits to her will, even though doing so brings about a painful rupture with his favorite daughter, Brünnhilde.

Following Das Rheingold, in which they explored how the gods regain their original power, director Tobias Kratzer and his creative team now turn their attention to the theme of homelessness and displacement. They approach it both in a literal sense—through Siegmund, who is a fugitive without a home or homeland—and in a metaphorical one, embodied by Wotan, who grows increasingly isolated and adrift amid the vastness of eternity and cosmic anxiety. As Kratzer explains, the opera asks whether love might offer a solution to this dilemma. Can love “heal” this sense of homelessness, or at least allow it to be forgotten for a time? Or is such hope ultimately the greatest of all self-deceptions?