Wagner: Die Walküre

"His is the art of translating, by subtle gradations, all that is excessive, immense, ambitious in spiritual and natural mankind. On listening to this ardent and despotic music one feels at times as though one discovered again, painted in the depths of a gathering darkness torn asunder by dreams, the dizzy imaginations induced by opium.” This is how Charles Baudelaire, one of Richard Wagner's most enthusiastic followers, described what the Ring of the Nibelung, one of the most grandiose musical epics in music history, meant to him. As has been a tradition for several years now, the 15-hour tetralogy will once again be performed with an international cast featuring several singers familiar from the Bayreuth Festival, including Johan Botha, Anja Kampe, Iréne Theorin and Judit Németh. 

Of the four operas, it is perhaps Die Walküre that has the most passages of music to have become established on non-operatic concert programmes, such as the sweeping storm music, Siegmund's Spring Song, the Ride of the Valkyries, and finally Wotan's Farewell and the Magic Fire Music.

German-language performance, with projected subtitles in Hungarian.