Chips and Rhine Seltzer: Zagrosek’s Walküre on DVD

Staatsorchester Stuttgart, conducted by Lothar Zagrosek
Siegmund: Robert Gambill, Hunding: Attila Jun, Wotan: Jan-Hendrik Rootering, Sieglinde: Angela Denoke, Brünnhilde: Renate Behle, Fricka: Tichina Vaughn
Naxos/TDK DVD 20 5207 9 DVUS-OPRDNW
Length: 229 minutes

The second in the TDK series of Wagner’s immortal teratology, this Walküre is inventive, intense, well acted, and superbly sung. Unlike Das Rheingold, it doesn’t have a strong unifying metaphor (Rheingold’s was of gods as gangster capitalists [see the June–July issue—Ed.]), but it is set in the twentieth century like the others in the series (although a naturalistic, rural European, early twentieth-century setting). Hunding still has a hut, but its walls and lighting are sprinkled with expressionist dust. In Scene 3, in which Sieglinde (Angela Denoke) first sings to Siegmund (Robert Gambill) of the sword—“Eine Waffe lass mich dir weisen”—a light image of the sword shines on her nightgown between her breasts. The chemistry between Denoke and Gambill is superb throughout, but is particularly notable in Act 2, Scene 3, in which they are fleeing through the forest. Denoke really seems like she is coming unglued as she warns Siegmund away from her with the! cry: “Hinweg! Hinweg! Flieh’ die Entweihte!”

As Brünnhilde, Renate Behle is all sinew and angles, her wrinkles congeries of conflicting moods. Her singing is not as full-throated as Tichina Vaughn’s Fricka, who manages to convey threat through well-shaped portamentos. Yet Behle is a riveting presence, particularly when she first confronts Siegmund in one of Wagner’s spookiest scenes. There is humor, too, notably in Wotan’s first scene, in which he plays with clay human figures, but particularly in the famous Ride of the Walküre. The ladies come out in miniskirts and black paper wings and prance across the stage as prone warriors resembling Pompeii volcano victims lurch by them with machine-like precision. Wotan is portrayed as the complex character that he is, willful yet ultimately intimidated by his jealous wife. His final scene with Brünnhilde is terrifying and heart-rending. This DVD is worth owning and playing to other Wagner aficionados, but not without a full bowl of potato chips and bottles of Rhine seltzer.

– Peter Bates