Barrie Kosky's new production of Die Walküre, the second opera in his Ring Cycle for the Royal Opera House, opened to sensational reviews across the board.
Kosky's brilliantly cinematic tableaux and subtle characterisation were standout elements of this production, which left spectators reeling with its apt commentary on environmental destruction.
Kosky is such a terrific director, sensitive not only to the text but also to the score. He makes you see Wagner’s music.
Mark Pullinger, Gramophone
The second instalment of Covent Garden’s Ring has a startlingly theatrical production by Barrie Kosky. There’s not much scenery, and certainly no Rhine and forests. [...] Instead, Kosky fills the stage with brilliantly imagined episodes. The Valkyries scene, for instance, is a mix of Macbeth witches, zombie apocalypse and Friday night in an Essex boozer, with cartfuls of decomposed bodies thrown in for good measure.
The Times, Richard Morrison
Kosky and his design team’s focus in this developing Ring is, as the director suggests in a programme note, “environmental apocalypse”. Gigantic trees (or their burnt remains) fill the stage in Acts II and III; the burning tree that surrounds the sleeping Brünnhilde in the final minutes is truly spectacular. Meanwhile, the theatre’s own vast, empty backstage area is highlighted at the beginning and end of the piece. The result is considerably more visually captivating than last season’s Das Rheingold, and augurs well for the cycle’s two remaining operas.
George Hall, The Stage
Wagner allowed himself the luxury of two beginnings to The Ring, casting Rheingold as a “preliminary evening” and, when the storm breaks at the opening of Walküre, it crashes out of the orchestra and over an entirely bare stage. The scene is set, literally so, for a story to be shaped by the director Barrie Kosky in entirely modern naturalistic terms, largely following the now-established precepts of the Dogme 95 film-makers such as Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg.And so each picture and movement and gesture on stage takes its form from the music. There is no sense of one serving or merely illustrating the other; rather the kind of fusion one imagines Wagner had in mind when idealising the “total work of art”. If this Ring were an HBO series, the Emmy awards would be in the can.
Peter Quantrill, Bachtrack
The second of the Royal Opera’s new Ring cycle again places Erda, the ancient Earth Mother, at its heart to create a memorable new production full of very fine singing and playing [...] It’s almost as if Kosky is using Erda’s physical presence to add to the network of musical themes used by Wagner to represent characters and ideas.Kosky has said that this Ring was inspired by images of the aftermath of bush fires in his native Australia, and the idea of the despoliation of nature is suggested everywhere, without ever becoming a hectoring message.
Erica Jeal, The Guardian
