Emotional devastating drama Die Walkure comes to Beijing

Conductor Jaap van Zweden (left), artistic director of the Beijing Music Festival Yu Long (center), and Bulgarian director Vera Nemirova (right) brief the media on an opera Die Walkure, which will debut in Beijing on next Tuesday evening, Oct 24, 2017. [Photo: China Plus]

One of the most popular international operas "Die Walkure" will be performed in Beijing next week.

A stunningly powerful story featuring Norse mythology, the drama will have its music performed by the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of famous conductor Jaap van Zweden.

Die Walkure, part of Richard Wagner's epic The Ring, is a glorious marriage of drama and music, and tells the story of the curse-inflicting Wotan, the king of the gods.

The devastating drama involves complex relationships between lovers, brother and sister, father and daughter. Every character is unforgettable — from the valiant Siegmund and Sieglinde, to the headstrong Brünnhilde and the mighty tortured Wotan.

Previously, Bulgarian director Vera Nemirova said in Beijing that the production of Die Walkure is a recreation of the very first Salzburg Easter Festival opera production.

"The set design is a recreation from 1967. It's a contemporary staging and I think the public will enjoy it because it's very emotional, very close to us, and the way of story-telling is also very humane,"Vera Nemirova.

In 1967, the first Salzburg Easter Festival presented a legendary production of Richard Wagner's The Ring of the Nibelung, also known as the Ring Cycle, led by the Austrian maestro Herbert von Karajan.

This new production of Die Walküre directed by Vera Nemirova is in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the festival in 2017.

Now as Die Walküre comes to China, it is bestowed with a Chinese element, featuring musical accompaniment from the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra.

Internationally famous Dutch conductor Jaap van Zweden is very proud of Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, with whom he has been working for years.

"This orchestra has made themselves better by group sessions, by playing chamber music. And so you can feel this orchestra has become, in my opinion, from an orchestra which has a hundred members, changed into a family of a hundred members," Jaap van Zweden noted.

Along with immense orchestral forces, world-class singers will also show how the burning passion seizes Siegmund and Sieglinde, the two mortal children of the god Wotan, climaxing in a love duet.

Australian tenor Stuart Skelton plays valiant Siegmund.

"It's exciting for me as a singer. In everything that you do, that you get to take the story that Wagner wrote for us and musically tell his story every time. As Jaap also said, we find our own timing, our own language in every moment of the performance and coordinate that between Vera and us on stage, and with Jaap and the orchestra in the pit to make the story as immediate and as compelling theatre and story-telling as possible. That's our challenge".

The upcoming treat for fans of classical music in Beijing is a co-production between the Salzburg Easter Festival and the ongoing Beijing Music Festival.

Die Walkure will be performed next Tuesday and Friday evening at the Poly Theatre in Beijing.