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Seattle opera walkure11/11/2023 ![]() ![]() It also supported the singers nicely, while detailing the psychological complexity woven into each scene. ![]() ![]() What I did notice was how glorious the music sounded, how many details I caught that I hadn’t heard before (particularly leitmotifs), how the climaxes didn’t hold back. Wagner’s music is more about the ebb and flow and smooth transitions between tempo changes. “Here comes a glacial reading of the Ring.” But that never happened, or if it did, I didn’t notice. I noticed that the overture was played slower than I’d ever heard it played before, which lessened its dramatic impact. ![]() Anyway, my knowledge would encompass the globe-traveling talent, rather than the homegrown variety. This Seattle production had no names I recognized (minus Stephanie Blythe), but I haven’t been paying attention to the world of opera recently. Afterwards, I got signatures from all of the above, minus James Levine, Placido Domingo, and Matti Salminen (the latter two die at the end of Act II, after all). Assembled were the dream cast of Placido Domingo as Siegmund, Deborah Voigt as Sieglinde (coming off being fired from a Covent Garden production of Ariadne auf Naxos because she was too large to fit in a cocktail dress), Matti Salminen as Hunding, James Morris as Wotan, and Jane Eaglen as Brünnhilde, not to mention the excellent conducting of James Levine, who by that time was conducting a quicker Ring than he had previously (sadly, I forgot who played Fricka, Wotan’s long-suffering wife). The first Die Walküre I saw was in New York City on April 12, 2004. Siegmund embraces Sieglinde after pulling the sword from the tree, Act I I’ve heard all of his operas from Der Fliegende Holländer on, and I own two sets of the Ring, but this would be only the second time that I had seen a Wagnerian opera in person, or at all. In fact, not only was it the only Ring opera I had seen, it was the only Wagnerian opera. Previous to watching these two operas, I had only see Die Walküre live. ![]()
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