About the opera
- Run time: 4hrs 20min, 2 intermissions
- Sung in: German
- Subtitles: English, German
- Opera house: Vienna State Opera
Die Walküre, the second opera of Wagner's Ring cycle, follows Das Rheingold and precedes Siegfried and Götterdämmerung. Die Walküre introduces many of Wagner's most memorable musical themes. As with all Wagner's operas, love is the main subject. Act I is about the passionate yet forbidden romance between a brother and a sister. Thier offspring, Siegfried, is the subject of the next opera in the Ring cycle. Act III deals with Wotan's tragic love for his disobedient Valkyrie daughter, Brünnhilde. In the third act the composer unleashes his most famous and spectacular anthem—the famous Ride of the Valkyries.
Ticket information
- Select a date an book
- E-Ticket (Print@home)
Vienna State Opera
Opernring 2, 1010 Vienna View in Google Maps
How to get there:
Subway: U1, U2, U4 to Karlsplatz
Trams: 1, 2, D, 62, 71 to Opernring
Conductor Franz Welser-Möst
Siegmund Giorgio Berrugi
Hunding Ain Anger
Wotan Eric Owens
Sieglinde Tamara Wilson
Brünnhilde Ricarda Merbeth
Fricka Tanja Ariane Baumgartner
Richard Wagner (1813–83) was one of the most significant figures in the history of opera. His works transformed the course of Western music, either by extension of his discoveries or reaction against them.
Wagner controlled all aspects of his theatrical works, writing both the music and the librettos of his operas, giving instructions for scenic design, staging, and action, and conducted most of their premieres. His aesthetic ideal was what he called a Gesamtkunstwerk (“total work of art”), meaning a work in which all art forms are united in the service of drama.
Between 1848 and 1853 Wagner composed a prose version of the medieval German epic Nibelungenlied, which became the basis for the librettos for the Ring Cycle.
