About this Piece

Synopsis:

Wotan’s warrior daughters, the Valkyries, collect the bodies of dead warriors on a mountaintop before taking them to Valhalla. They see their sister Brünnhilde riding toward them. She arrives with the mortal woman Sieglinde. Behind them, Wotan, king of the gods, is in pursuit wanting to punish Brünnhilde for her betrayal in Act II. Grieving the death of her beloved twin brother Siegmund, Sieglinde invites her own death. When Brünnhilde tells her she carries Siegmund’s child, Sieglinde takes the broken shards of Siegmund’s sword and flees. 

Wotan arrives and condemns Brünnhilde to mortality. Brünnhilde pleads with her father—she had only executed his true wishes instead of the outcome his wife Fricka had demanded. Wotan refuses to relent; Brünnhilde, in her mortal form, will lie asleep on a rock to be claimed as bride by whoever wakes her. She asks for one final concession, that she be surrounded by a ring of fire that only the bravest hero—perhaps the child of Siegmund and Sieglinde—will breach. Wotan agrees and, with a kiss, sends Brünnhilde to sleep. He calls on the god of fire, Loge, to encircle her rock with flames and casts the spell: “He who my spearpoint’s sharpness feareth shall cross not the flaming fire!”

Program Note:

The year was 1938 when the Hollywood Bowl mounted a full production of Die Walküre, one of the most spectacular events in its history, and one that that no opera house, then or now, could dream of.  

Eighteen Valkyries on white horses descended from the Hollywood hills to the iconic battle cry “Hojotoho!” Such was the aggressive magic in the landscape Wagner envisioned for Die Walküre. Years later, Francis Ford Coppola choreographed a fleet of helicopters on a napalm bombing raid to the same music. Yet those surface matters are surprisingly negotiable; the music already conjures this herd of mythical semi-feral Valkyries in ways that are never dated or quaint. Wagner’s music delivers an exciting treat for audiences returning from the two previous acts of Die Walküre, regardless of the accompanying visuals or onstage flourishes. The same goes for the language Wagner employed, with its mixture of archaic elements, myth-based fantasy, and poetry. Best not to probe the meaning of “Hojotoho!” It’s analogous to “Yippee ki-yay.”  

Among the three acts of Die Walküre, the first is the most lyrical and the second the most informational, exploring the limits of existence in this mythical world. The third act is a hard-driving, runaway train with more characters, more action, and more volume baked into some of the most imposing orchestral writing Wagner had accomplished up until that time.  

The Valkyrie battle cry slices through the high-spirited major-key terrain with a downward-diving G chord, inside of which is a rogue D-sharp, adding danger to this world of warriors without conscience, hesitation, or reflection. In contrast to Brünnhilde’s solo battle cry in Act II, the Act III version is expanded into eight-part vocal writing, each of Brunnhilde’s sisters voicing her own “Hojotoho!” as these aggressive servants of Wotan collect fallen heroes for their heavenly reward in Valhalla. In filmmaker Atom Egoyan’s rare foray into opera staging for the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto, the Valkyries tossed body bags around like bundles of laundry, showing the seemingly endless visual responses to Wagner’s aural stimulation. What keeps the scene from lapsing into camp is the fierceness of expression. This is the music of warriors who have never known the possibility of defeat.  

But they are about to know fear. Arriving with Sieglinde, Brünnhilde tells her half-sister, almost in a celebratory manner, that she will give birth to a hero who can set the world right by returning the all-powerful Ring of the Nibelungen to the Rhine. Meanwhile, she pleads with her sisters for protection; for the first time in her existence, she needs it. Wotan’s rage is monumental. He pronounces sentences upon her that become more degrading at every turn. She will be stripped of her powers. She will become a wife, imprisoned in a union more submissive than Sieglinde’s with Hunding. 

Finally, when the Valkyrie sisters are driven off, the time that Brünnhilde and Wotan have alone emerges as one of those great Wagnerian valleys of tension that leads to an emotional outpouring that is unexpected both from this warlike milieu and the imperious Wotan: love at its most profound. Brünnhilde’s transformation results in saving the pregnant Sieglinde carrying a child who potentially will set the world right. Wotan’s psyche is all but impenetrable. What saves Brünnhilde from a humiliating fate is her variation on Fricka’s argument from the previous act: Brünnhilde’s disgrace would reflect badly on Wotan’s authority. The compromise is that Brünnhilde is put to sleep within a circle of fire that can be penetrated only by the most heroic of heroes—the child of Sieglinde whom Brünnhilde helped to save.  

Wotan transforms like a dam bursting in the greatest emotional outpouring in Die Walküre since Act I. Love hasn’t been absent in his world, but it has been unexplored territory. Order is supreme, and so are machinations for obtaining and maintaining power, particularly when it concerns the all-powerful ring (now owned and guarded by a poison-spewing monster). No longer marginalized, love hits like a tsunami. Wotan’s expression of fatherly affection contains more than human depth; it offers a means of breaking free of the toxic shambles that have come to pervade his life. In Wotan’s impassioned farewell to his favorite daughter, the composer knew to concentrate on the ultimate point of the scene. When Wotan conjures Loge, the fire god does not appear; only his presence is felt through his flickering leitmotif so as not to get in the way of the emotional breakthrough. Underneath, a new musical theme swells, foreshadowing the appearance of Siegfried, the son of Siegmund and Sieglinde, who is Wotan’s best hope for recovering the ring.  

The fate of the ring and Valhalla are in the hands of mortals now. The two final installments of the Ring cycle, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods) take place on an almost entirely human plane rife with emotion—both for Brünnhilde and Wotan—that brings only momentary joy, certainly no power, bits of agency, but possibly a sense of place in a world over which they will have none of their previous control. The gods who once held the future of the world are the ultimate cautionary tale: Always achieving and acquiring, they’re often left with nothing.

—David Patrick Stearns

Read about the other acts of Die Walküre:

Die Walküre Act I

Die Walküre Act II