Die Walküre (The Valkyrie)

Program notes

First Day of Der Ring des Nibelungen, in three acts

About the Work

Die Walküre (The Valkyrie) is the second of the four dramas that make up Der Ring des Nibelungen, and the one most often given without the others. Wagner wrote the poem in 1852 and composed the music between 1854 and 1856, while he was living as a political exile in Zurich. He tried out the first act there in 1856 before a few invited friends, with a piano standing in for the orchestra and himself singing both Siegmund and Hunding.

The stage had to wait another fourteen years. Wagner wanted the Ring to be heard complete or not at all, but he had sold the performing rights to his patron, King Ludwig II of Bavaria, and the king would not wait. Wagner begged him to have the piece played in private and keep the public out. The king went ahead, and Die Walküre was first performed in Munich on 26 June 1870, as Das Rheingold had been the year before. Wagner’s own production came in 1876, at the first Bayreuth Festival, as part of the full cycle.

The story takes up a generation after Das Rheingold. Wotan, ruler of the gods, needs the ring back from the giant who now guards it, but he is bound by his own treaties and cannot take it himself. His plan is to raise a free hero who will do it unprompted. That hero is Siegmund, his son by a mortal woman.

In Act I Siegmund, wounded and unarmed, takes shelter from a storm in a house built round an ash tree. It belongs to Hunding, whose unhappy wife, Sieglinde, tends the stranger. Hunding turns out to be one of the men hunting him, and grants him one night’s hospitality before they fight. Sieglinde drugs her husband’s drink and shows Siegmund a sword that an old man once drove into the tree. He pulls it out. By then the two have recognised each other as twins separated in childhood, and as lovers.

Act II belongs to the gods. Wotan orders his daughter Brünnhilde, the Valkyrie of the title, to protect Siegmund. Then his wife Fricka, guardian of marriage, shows him that a hero he has bred and armed is not free at all, and makes him swear to let Siegmund die. Brünnhilde goes to Siegmund to announce his death, is moved by his refusal to leave Sieglinde, and decides to defy her father. Wotan intervenes, the sword shatters on his spear, and Hunding kills Siegmund.

In Act III Brünnhilde flees to her sisters with Sieglinde, tells her she is carrying Siegmund’s child, the future Siegfried, and sends her into the forest with the pieces of the sword. Wotan’s punishment is to strip Brünnhilde of her divinity and leave her asleep on a rock for the first man who finds her. Her last request is granted: a ring of fire that only a fearless hero will cross.

What to Listen For

The storm. There is no overture. Low strings hammer out the rain and Siegmund’s flight, and the curtain rises as the storm blows itself out. When Sieglinde brings him water, the orchestra thins to a solo cello: the first sign of what the two do not yet know.

Spring. Near the end of Act I the door flies open on a moonlit night and Siegmund sings “Winterstürme wichen dem Wonnemond”, the nearest thing in the Ring to a self-contained song. From there the act runs without a break to the drawing of the sword.

Wotan’s monologue. In Act II Wotan tells Brünnhilde the whole story so far, beginning almost in a whisper. In a concert performance, with the orchestra on stage and no scenery, this long scene shows how much the instruments know that the characters do not.

The Annunciation of Death. Brünnhilde appears to Siegmund over slow, solemn brass chords. It is the turning point of the drama, the place where the story of the gods and the story of the twins meet.

The Ride of the Valkyries. The best-known passage in the score opens Act III. Heard in its place, with eight voices calling across the orchestra, it is wilder than the concert extract.

Wotan’s Farewell. The last half hour is a scene for father and daughter alone. Wotan kisses Brünnhilde’s godhead away, the music of her sleep descends through the orchestra, and he calls up the fire, which flickers in high woodwind, harps and glockenspiel as he leaves.

The Philharmonie gives a running time of about five hours, with two intervals.