Richard Wagner - Die Walküre - Evans, Jerusalem, Tomlinson - Barenboim, Bayreuth 1993Siegmund: Poul Elming,
Wotan: John Tomlinson,
Hunding: Matthias Hölle,
Brünnhilde: Anne Evans,
Sieglinde: Nadine Secude,
Fricka: Linda Finnie,
Gerhilde: Eva Johansson,
Ortlinde: Ruth Floeren,
Ortlinde: Ruth Floeren,
Waltraute: Shirley Close,
Schwertleite: Hitomi Katagiri,
Helmwige: Eva-Marie Bundschuh,
Siegrune: Linda Finnie, Grimgerde:
Birgitta Svendén
Rossweisse: Hebe Dijkstra
This legendary Bayreuth Festival production ( first installment of the 1991/1992 prd.) of Wagner’s "Der Ring des Nibelungen", directed by Harry Kupfer, with designs by Hans Schavernoch, and conducted by Daniel Barenboim, is considered perhaps the finest video recording of these four operas ever made. For their innovative modernist staging, Kupfer and his team turned away from the work’s time of origin and located The Ring at a “road of history”, a meeting-place of past, present and future, which sets the scene for the story’s struggles of power...
After initially scrambling on the surface, the partisan Siegmund climbs down a tree trunk on the Road of History to find himself in Hunding´s abstract hut. The rest of Act 1 is history (ie. following the libretto).
In act two we are in the middle of the deserted Road of History, serving as an imaginary crossroad of destinies, taken into consideration the numbers of characters happening to pass by: Wotan, Fricka, Brünnhilde, Siegmund, Sieglinde and Hunding...
In the end the laser-beams once again pierce the mist to create the quadrangularly laser-framed Walkure rock.
Nowhere better than in this Walküre chamber-play does Kupfer succeed in bringing out the drama with his obsessively precise individual stage direction. Poul Elming-Nadine Secunde may only be equalled in dramatic intensity by Jeannine Altmeyer-Peter Hoffman for Chéreau in the 1976 Ring. As singer-actors they may hardly be bettered combined with Matthias Hölle´s menacing Hunding, caught in his short prime.
As to directorial concept, The road of History is still there and it is still one man´s fight against his brother to survive.
Someone once described the Walküre Act 2 as the pendulum around which the entire Nibelungen Ring swings. With Wotan´s monologue in the center. John Tomlinson´s Wotan still takes centerplace, and though he is a rogue, he is not entirely unsympathetic. The vitality he projects makes it hard not to like him. Furthermore, his constant under-restimation of his opponents is just so essentially human..Brünnhilde is more a lover than a daughter to him. His wife, on the contrary, he despises as well as underestimates.
Rossweisse: Hebe Dijkstra
This legendary Bayreuth Festival production ( first installment of the 1991/1992 prd.) of Wagner’s "Der Ring des Nibelungen", directed by Harry Kupfer, with designs by Hans Schavernoch, and conducted by Daniel Barenboim, is considered perhaps the finest video recording of these four operas ever made. For their innovative modernist staging, Kupfer and his team turned away from the work’s time of origin and located The Ring at a “road of history”, a meeting-place of past, present and future, which sets the scene for the story’s struggles of power...
After initially scrambling on the surface, the partisan Siegmund climbs down a tree trunk on the Road of History to find himself in Hunding´s abstract hut. The rest of Act 1 is history (ie. following the libretto).
In act two we are in the middle of the deserted Road of History, serving as an imaginary crossroad of destinies, taken into consideration the numbers of characters happening to pass by: Wotan, Fricka, Brünnhilde, Siegmund, Sieglinde and Hunding...
In the end the laser-beams once again pierce the mist to create the quadrangularly laser-framed Walkure rock.
Nowhere better than in this Walküre chamber-play does Kupfer succeed in bringing out the drama with his obsessively precise individual stage direction. Poul Elming-Nadine Secunde may only be equalled in dramatic intensity by Jeannine Altmeyer-Peter Hoffman for Chéreau in the 1976 Ring. As singer-actors they may hardly be bettered combined with Matthias Hölle´s menacing Hunding, caught in his short prime.
As to directorial concept, The road of History is still there and it is still one man´s fight against his brother to survive.
Someone once described the Walküre Act 2 as the pendulum around which the entire Nibelungen Ring swings. With Wotan´s monologue in the center. John Tomlinson´s Wotan still takes centerplace, and though he is a rogue, he is not entirely unsympathetic. The vitality he projects makes it hard not to like him. Furthermore, his constant under-restimation of his opponents is just so essentially human..Brünnhilde is more a lover than a daughter to him. His wife, on the contrary, he despises as well as underestimates.
