Parece que Richard Jones había planeado un grandioso final de fuego, pero a la poco previsora administración de la casa no se le ocurrió consultar con la municipalidad hasta último momento.Gran error éste si se tiene en cuenta que las medidas de prevención de incendio son rigurosísimas en una ciudad que ha protagonizado catastróficos finales de fuego a lo largo de su historia.

Given director Stefan Herheim’s previous successes in realising the most conspicuously magical episodes of Rheingold and delineating the subtle character drama of Walküre, one had high hopes that he might even be able to pull off the impossible task of creating a Siegfried that didn’t drag in its opening acts.

Although many of the images in this Walküre may have drawn on conceptual threads from Mr Herheim’s yet-unseen Rheingold, the staging stood admirably on its own.Regardless of whether or not the suitcases were the continuation of an element from Rheingold, they did an excellent job of mirroring the sense of desperate flight that pervades the opera: Siegmund from his pursuers, Siegmund and Sieglinde from Hunding, Brünnhilde from Wotan, Wotan from Fricka and the inevitability of his End.