Die Walküre review – moments of searing power in an unfocused evening

There were moments in Die Walküre at the Royal Opera House when the audience was entirely still and only Antonio Pappano’s periodic gasps broke the surface of Wagner’s score. When the low brass cohered into a single heavy tread that swept up everything in its path. When Nina Stemme’s fearless Brünnhilde gazed at sword point into the eyes of the hero she had been commanded to lead into death and the physical chemistry on stage was instantly charged. When John Lundgren’s Wotan, flawed but tenacious, sank to his knees, voice flagging: an all-too-human god pathetically stricken.

But in the second evening of Keith Warner’s Ring cycle revival these peaks were clouded by problems elsewhere. Dubious tuning, ragged ensemble and hit-and miss horn motifs stood as a reminder that even excellent orchestras have off-nights. Only a second after that flash of palpable connection onstage at the sharp end of Siegmund’s sword, Stemme glanced down to Pappano’s baton – the obvious focus of much singing throughout the evening – and the dramatic intensity was immediately lost.  

Then there was Stefanos Lazaridis’s set, with its often mystifying symbolic debris – “an obstacle course of leftover props” as it was described during the production’s previous outing – which seemed designed principally to impede its occupants. They ducked, clambered and clung to walls until it was all cleared away leaving only a spinning white wall, to make space for the final act’s devastating confrontation between Stemme and Lundgren: a drama of minute gestures (glances missed, hands left ungrasped) and searing, desperate vocal power.

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Emily Magee’s Sieglinde sounded overcast, but Sarah Connolly (Fricka), Ain Anger (Hunding) and Stuart Skelton (in an overdue ROH debut as Siegmund) were deeply compelling, the valkyries themselves deliciously fierce. All the more frustrating, then, that this performance failed to sustain the focus of its unforgettable highlights.