Richard WAGNER

Die Walküre

Staatsorchester Stuttgart, Lothar Zagrosek

Picture Format:           16:9 Anamorph

Sound Format:            PCM stereo, Dolby Digital 5.1, DTS 5.1

Running Time:             229 mins

Region Code:              PAL All

Booklet Languages:   GB, F, D

Recording Date(s):     29 September 2002/ 2 January 2003

Following last month’s Rheingold, the second part of The Ring, Die Walküre, is released on TDK this month with some of the most interesting music of the cycle. It was recorded live at the Staatsoper Stuttgart on 29 September 2002 and 2 January 2003.

The production was directed by the “psychoanalyst” Christof Nel, as the second of this Stuttgart Ring’s four producers. Nel chose to reveal Wagner’s characters, their ambivalences and their conflicts, using contemporary settings, situations and gestures. Karl Kneidl’s set designs are similarly far from traditional: in the first act, Hunding’s shack in the forest is built from veneered planks, with a faded shower curtain in the corner; in the second, a tracksuited Wotan sprawls on an air-mattress, invoking the image of his army of dead heroes with the help of a squadron of model soldiers the size of garden gnomes.

Cast:

Siegmund                    Robert Gambill                                  Hunding                Attila Jun

Wotan                           Jan-Hendrik Rootering                    Sieglinde              Angela Denoke

Brünnhilde                   Renate Behle                                     Fricka                    Tichina Vaughn

Gerhilde                       Eva-Maria Westbroek                      Ortlinde                 Wiebke Göetjes

Waltraute                     Stella Kleindienst                              Schwertleite          Helene Ranada

Helmwige                    Magdalena Schäfer                          Siegrune               Nidia Palacios

Grimgerde                   Maria Theresa Ullrich                       Roßweiße           Margit Diefenthal