Why is Siegmund dressed in running shoes and a hooded sweatshirt? Why are the Walküren dressed like cheap prostitutes? Why is the magic fire that envelopes Brünnhilde a handful of candles and an on-stage spotlight -- and why does Wotan watch the end of the opera on a television monitor? Who can say? One might as well ask why Wagner built the plot of Der Ring des Nibelungen on the king of the gods being a serial polygamist and the plot of Die Walküre on a brother and sister's incestuous love producing a hero who will redeem the world of gods and men.
Now as always in opera, the real question is: how well does it work? And the real answer is: splendidly. No matter how strange the plot, Wagner's music is unbearably moving, touching in ways that go right past an audience's intellect to its heart. And no matter how weird the production, and Christoph Nel's production is distinctly weird, the performances in this Stuttgart Walküre are overwhelmingly affecting, stirring the audience's emotions so profoundly that the production's odder elements are almost ignorable.
Angela Denoke's Sieglinde is unbelievably affecting when she first glimpses her brother-lover in Act I. Robert Gambill's Siegmund is incredibly heartbreaking when he kisses his sleeping sister-lover farewell in Act II. Jan-Hendrik Rootering's Wotan is astoundingly poignant as he bids his daughter and future wife to her hero-nephew Siegfried farewell in Act III. One could regret that
Tichina Vaughn's Fricka is possibly too unrelenting, that Attila Jun's Hunding is perhaps unsympathetic, and that, most damaging of all, Renate Behle's Brünnhilde is almost certainly too tonally unlovely. But one can only applaud conductor
Lothar Zagrosek's fast-moving drama and the Staatsoper Stuttgart orchestra's dynamic if sometimes somewhat less than entirely together ensemble. With bright sound, crisp images, and unfussy camera work, this should not be the first Walküre one sees, but it is well-worth seeing by anyone who loves the work.