A Family Madness

The second evening of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden’s new Ring cycle – or the first evening proper, to follow Wagner’s own numbering – cemented director Dmitri Tcherniakov’s pre-eminence as the master of expectation-defying left turns. After establishing the mythological world of the E.S.C.H.E. research institute in Das Rheingold, Mr Tcherniakov used Die Walküre to reposition himself, adding a few new elements and expanding the rich complexity of his vision while adhering to his own secret logic with absolute rigour. As in the previous evening, not everything that happened on stage had its own strict analogue in Wagner’s text – and vice versa – but with electric performances from Vida Miknevičiūtė and Michael Volle, plus a steady stream of subtle magnificence from Christian Thielemann and the Staatskapelle, the guessing-game of the…