Die Walküre, Metropolitan Opera, New York
By Martin Bernheimer
Published: September 28 2004 03:00 | Last updated: September 28 2004 03:00
For the past couple of decades at the Metropolitan Opera, Die Walküre was the exclusive property of James Levine, who invariably made the music spacious and the drama thoughtful. Now distracted with duties at the Boston Symphony, the boss has passed the baton to Valery Gergiev. Talk about Wagnerian vicissitudes.
Saturday night, in a house yawning with empty seats, Gergiev imposed unfamiliar accents on the complex challenge, figuratively and literally. He sacrificed grandeur for agitation, sped through much of the heroic rhetoric and scrambled a few orchestral devices in the inexact process. The impetuous results were exciting, to a degree; also disorienting.
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A synopsis of this opera is here.
More information on this production is here.
Recommended recordings:
