"Hojotoho!" — eight shield-maidens gather dead heroes over a galloping 9/8 (1870)
The Ride opens Act 3, and marched into film history over the helicopters of Apocalypse Now
Recording: Sphinxdutroène · EEF OAL-1, Wikimedia Commons
Opera · German opera
Die Walküre
26 June 1870, Nationaltheater, Munich
Richard Wagner · libretto by the composer
The second of the four Ring operas, and the one most often played on its own. Twin siblings separated at birth meet in a stranger's hut, fall in love and flee; a god is forced by his wife to abandon his own son; and the god's favourite daughter, disobeying him to save the woman carrying that son's child, is stripped of her divinity and left asleep on a mountain inside a ring of fire.
How to spot them
- ▸Act 1 is almost a chamber piece for three voices — Siegmund, Sieglinde and Hunding — in a hut built round an ash tree
- ▸A sword named Nothung is pulled from the tree trunk by the only man who can draw it
- ▸Act 3 opens with eight shield-maidens whooping over a galloping 9/8 figure
- ▸Ends with a long baritone farewell, a kiss that removes godhead, and shimmering fire music
- ▸Wotan (bass-baritone), Brünnhilde (dramatic soprano), Fricka (mezzo), Siegmund (heldentenor)
Arias & moments — listen
"Leb wohl, du kühnes, herrliches Kind!" — a god kisses away his daughter's divinity (1870)
Wotan's Farewell, the great bass-baritone scene of the cycle
Recording: Richard Wagner · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
Loge is summoned to ring a sleeping woman with flame that only a fearless hero may cross (1870)
The Magic Fire Music closes the opera
Recording: Richard Wagner · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
"Winterstürme wichen dem Wonnemond" — the Spring Song, as a door blows open on a moonlit night (1870)
Siegmund's Act 1 song to his twin sister Sieglinde
"Todesverkündigung" — a warrior is told he is to die, and refuses to enter Valhalla without his love (1870)
The Annunciation of Death, Brünnhilde's first meeting with Siegmund
A goddess of marriage forces her husband to let his own mortal son be killed (1870)
Fricka's Act 2 confrontation with Wotan, the hinge of the whole cycle
Quick-fire facts
- •It is the second opera of Der Ring des Nibelungen, following Das Rheingold.
- •King Ludwig II insisted on a separate Munich premiere on 26 June 1870, conducted by Franz Wüllner, which Wagner tried to stop; it first appeared in the cycle at Bayreuth in 1876.
- •Siegmund and Sieglinde are twins, and their child is Siegfried.
- •The sword is called Nothung, left in the ash tree by Wotan disguised as a one-eyed wanderer.
- •Hunding, Sieglinde's husband, is a bass; Wotan kills him with a contemptuous gesture.
- •The Ride of the Valkyries accompanies the helicopter attack in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979).
- •The eight Valkyries besides Brünnhilde are Gerhilde, Ortlinde, Waltraute, Schwertleite, Helmwige, Siegrune, Grimgerde and Rossweisse.
- •Wagner's stage direction for the end asks for the rock to be encircled by fire — the reason Bayreuth spent decades experimenting with steam and lighting.
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Sources
- Grove Music Online (Oxford Music Online) — Wagner, Richard: Die Walküre
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Die Walküre
- Barry Millington — The New Grove Guide to Wagner and His Operas