Die Walküre

Die Walküre is a tragically beautiful opera about springtime, love, finding one another and recognising a shared past. As in Das Rheingold, sins are also committed. A capital crime, in fact, when two siblings violate the taboo of falling in love with each other. Oddly enough, however, we do not condemn them, but actually feel for them with all our sympathy and compassion. And the pain of seeing Siegmund have to die in the deciding duel with Hunding is enough to pierce one's heart.
We also understand the bitter vacillations of the chief of the gods as he is forced into a dilemma - for even chief gods can wind up with dilemmas! The effect of his dialogue with his wife, Fricka, which is on the one hand a parody of the distasteful bickering familiar from civil marriages (Wagner was no model husband, and knew this genre from experience), and on the other hand, about the eternal and sacred moral principals, is a shocking one. And we are also shaken by the sight of Wotan as, grappling with his pain, he sends Brünnhilde into a deep sleep and envelopes her with an impenetrable wall of fire, so that only the most worthy hero, a man without fear, can awaken her.
The audience will be welcoming newcomer Stuart Skelton as Siegmund and, as Brünnhilde, the fondly remembered and wonderful Catherine Foster.

A music drama in three acts (German-language performance, with projected surtitles in Hungarian).