Die Walküre

About

In 2024, the Dresdner Festspielorchester and Concerto Köln, conducted by Kent Nagano, will perform Die Walküre in European cities boasting an illustrious Wagner tradition. Their tour will commence on 9 March in Prague, which in the second half of the 19th century became of the major Wagner centres, outdoing even Leipzig, Dresden and Berlin. The cult of Wagner was particularly nurtured by the legendary Neues deutsches Theater (NDT, today the State Opera) director Angelo Neumann, an ardent admirer and friend of Wagner, who chose Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg for the theatre’s festive inauguration, on 5 January 1888. Richard Wagner’s operas dominated the NDT repertoire throughout its half-century history, with the complete Der Ring des Nibelungen having been given regular performances. Wagner granted Neumann the right to perform the cycle, and Prague productions of the Ring were thus actually authentic interpretations authorised by the composer. Die Walküre was first presented in Bohemia on 20 December 1885, at the Estates Theatre in Prague by Gustav Mahler. The NDT staged the opera on 12 December 1888, a mere month after its opening. Of all the four parts of the cycle, Die Walküre was performed most frequently at the theatre, also in the form of stand-alone Acts. The most recent such event in Prague was the performance of Act 1 on 16 November 2017 at Forum Karlín by the State Opera Orchestra, conducted by Andreas Sebastian Weiser and featuring Andreas Schager in the role of Siegmund.