Wagner: Die Walküre (The Valkyrie)

Production by Robert Lepage

Production by Robert Lepage

In a career spanning more than 30 years, Sir Simon Rattle has distinguished himself through his long-term relationships with a number of orchestras, wide-ranging repertoire and innovative educational and audiencebuilding activities. He is currently Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Berliner Philharmoniker and Principal Artist with the OAE. Sir Simon first conducted the Berlin Philharmonic in 1987 and appeared regularly with the orchestra in subsequent years.The summer of 2006 saw the first instalment of their Wagner Ring Cycle at the Aix-en-Provence Festival. Sir Simon's most recent appearance at the Proms in Wagner brought forth ecstatic reviews, which bodes well for possible future installments of the Aix /Salzburg Ring on Bel Air Classiques.

"In what is both Mr. Rattle's and Aix's first Ring Cycle, "Die Walküre," the Ring's second chapter, was magically transformed by the enclosed space and lively acoustics of the Grand Théâtre de Provence. But where the new theater makes another significant difference is in Mr. Braunschweig's staging of the opera. Far more than in last year's "Rheingold," even the gods, notably Wotan and his twin children, Siegmund and Sieglinde, can now be felt to experience deeply human emotions. The final curtain brought a standing ovation for both orchestra and singers, with Ms.Westbroek singled out for her "extraordinary power and lyricism," as Jean-Louis Validire, Le Figaro's music critic, put it… The Ring Cycle continues here with "Siegfried" in 2008 and "Götterdammerüng" in 2009 and, as with "Das Rheingold" and "Die Walküre," they will be presented afresh at the Salzburg Easter Festival the following year." The New York Times, July 5, 2007

Christian Thielemann, “by common consent the leading Wagner conductor of our time” (Die Presse), returns to Bayreuth for this radiant account of Die Walküre filmed at the 2010 Festival. Appearing on DVD and Blu-ray for the first time, it provides the only audio-visual document of Tankred Dorst’s Ring production, and follows the hugely successful release of the whole cycle on CD. Two new singers join the cast: Johan Botha as Siegmund, who was showered with praise by the press (“ideal vocal casting” in the words of the critic on the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) and Edith Haller, with her “beautiful, strong soprano voice” (Süddeutsche Zeitung) as his sister and lover Sieglinde.

Extra features:

The making of Die Walküre

Cast Gallery

Running time 258 mins

Region Code All regions

Picture format 16:9 Anamorphic

Sound format 2.0LPCM + 5.1(5.0) DTS

Menu languages EN

Subtitles EN/FR/DE/ES

Christian Thielemann, “by common consent the leading Wagner conductor of our time” (Die Presse), returns to Bayreuth for this radiant account of Die Walküre filmed at the 2010 Festival. Appearing on DVD and Blu-ray for the first time, it provides the only audio-visual document of Tankred Dorst’s Ring production, and follows the hugely successful release of the whole cycle on CD. Two new singers join the cast: Johan Botha as Siegmund, who was showered with praise by the press (“ideal vocal casting” in the words of the critic on the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) and Edith Haller, with her “beautiful, strong soprano voice” (Süddeutsche Zeitung) as his sister and lover Sieglinde.

Extra features:

The making of Die Walküre

Cast Gallery

Running time 258 mins

Region Code All regions

Picture format 16:9 Anamorphic

Sound format 2.0LPCM + 5.1(5.0) DTS

Menu languages EN

Subtitles EN/FR/DE/ES

Stage / Video Director - Staged by La Fura dels Baus

Bonus - Making of Walküre 27 min.

Running Time 272 minutes (245´Opera + 27` Bonus)

Picture - 16:9, HD

Sound - 7.1 on BD, PCM Stereo, 5.1 on DVD

Subtitles - German, French, English, Spanish

Shot in full HD, 7.1 surround sound on Blu-ray, 5.1 sound on DVD

La Fura del Baus, famous for their opening ceremony of the Olympic games in Barcelona and opera stagings in Salzburg, Ruhrtriennale, etc., use in their groundbreaking Ring 3D computer projections that evoke computer games, organic structures built of athletic performers that recall the "Cirque du soleil".

From Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia, Valencia, 2008.

Incl. world-class Wagner singers such as Peter Seiffert, Petra-Maria Schnitzer, Matti Salminen and promising young talents like Jennifer Wilson (Brünnhilde) and Juha Uusitalo (Wotan), whom the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung hailed as a new "Number One among the opera gods."

Stage / Video Director - Staged by La Fura dels Baus

Bonus - Making of Walküre 27 min.

Running Time 272 minutes (245´Opera + 27` Bonus)

Picture - 16:9, HD

Sound - 7.1 on BD, PCM Stereo, 5.1 on DVD

Subtitles - German, French, English, Spanish

Shot in full HD, 7.1 surround sound on Blu-ray, 5.1 sound on DVD

La Fura del Baus, famous for their opening ceremony of the Olympic games in Barcelona and opera stagings in Salzburg, Ruhrtriennale, etc., use in their groundbreaking Ring 3D computer projections that evoke computer games, organic structures built of athletic performers that recall the "Cirque du soleil".

From Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia, Valencia, 2008.

Incl. world-class Wagner singers such as Peter Seiffert, Petra-Maria Schnitzer, Matti Salminen and promising young talents like Jennifer Wilson (Brünnhilde) and Juha Uusitalo (Wotan), whom the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung hailed as a new "Number One among the opera gods."

Set Design by Dirk Becker & Costume Design by Renée Listerdal.

“The free man must be his own maker” Richard Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung refl ects the composer’s autobiography as much as the political turmoil of his times. As work progressed, another fi gure grew to be as important as the hero Siegfried, the god Wotan, the mouthpiece for Wagner’s ideas. “He’s exactly like us: he is the sum of today’s intellectual consciousness, whereas Siegfried is what we hope the human being of the future will be, but who cannot be fashioned by us, and who must make himself by means of our destruction!” Our own doom as the basis of a happier future? Wagner dressed this Herculean task musically in the spreading, shimmering web of his leitmotivic working (there are approximately 20 distinct motives in Die Walküre). Dramaturgically, the conversational style of Das Rheingold gives way to the tone of bourgeois tragedy: incestuous passion, more than one form of deep-seated marital antagonism, and a lot of talk, a lot of self-justifi cation in the form of recapitulation. This, the First Day of the tetralogy (Das Rheingold being a “preliminary evening”), was without doubt the “most moving, the most tragic” of all Wagner’s works in the view of his wife Cosima, expressed in her diary on 31 August 1873. The text of Die Walküre was fi nished on 1 July 1852, and the score was completed in late March 1856. With the fi nancial help of his ever-generous friend (and future father-in-law) Franz Liszt, Wagner went to rest from his labours on the shores of Lake Geneva.

Set Design by Dirk Becker & Costume Design by Renée Listerdal.

“The free man must be his own maker” Richard Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung reflects the composer’s autobiography as much as the political turmoil of his times. As work progressed, another fi gure grew to be as important as the hero Siegfried, the god Wotan, the mouthpiece for Wagner’s ideas. “He’s exactly like us: he is the sum of today’s intellectual consciousness, whereas Siegfried is what we hope the human being of the future will be, but who cannot be fashioned by us, and who must make himself by means of our destruction!” Our own doom as the basis of a happier future? Wagner dressed this Herculean task musically in the spreading, shimmering web of his leitmotivic working (there are approximately 20 distinct motives in Die Walküre). Dramaturgically, the conversational style of Das Rheingold gives way to the tone of bourgeois tragedy: incestuous passion, more than one form of deep-seated marital antagonism, and a lot of talk, a lot of self-justifi cation in the form of recapitulation. This, the First Day of the tetralogy (Das Rheingold being a “preliminary evening”), was without doubt the “most moving, the most tragic” of all Wagner’s works in the view of his wife Cosima, expressed in her diary on 31 August 1873. The text of Die Walküre was fi nished on 1 July 1852, and the score was completed in late March 1856. With the fi nancial help of his ever-generous friend (and future father-in-law) Franz Liszt, Wagner went to rest from his labours on the shores of Lake Geneva.