Wagner’s Cage

Die Walküre is a blessing and a curse for the opera director. Here is every familiar Wagnerian cliché, with all the temptation for them to be lavishly reproduced: breast-plated women, supernatural intrigue, complex monologues, long orchestral interludes, and heavy displays of vocal declaration. But as generations of directors and scholars have demonstrated, Der Ring des Nibelungen – and Die Walküre in particular – is also a work crying out for creative reinvention. Whether as a contemporary family drama, an exploration of nineteenth-century capitalism, a study of wounded masculinity, a meditation on environmental catastrophe, or much more, the options are rich indeed. Is it necessary for a director to choose one path to the exclusion of the others? Perhaps not. But exploring several simultaneously inevitably requires a strong narrative…