WAGNER: The Valkyrie.(Review)

WAGNER: The Valkyrie (in English)

[] Hunter, Curphey, Howard; Remedios, Bailey, Grant; English National Opera Orchestra, Goodall. English text. Chandos CHAN 3038 (4) (Koch, dist.)

The Peter Moores Foundation, in addition to sponsoring recordings of opera in English for the Chandos label, is assisting with the reissue of similar recordings originally made for other labels. An exceptionally welcome example is the Ring cycle presented by ENO, originally released (and previously reissued on CD) by EMI, of which this is the first segment to appear on the new label.

At a time when supertitles sometimes are assumed to have solved forever the problem of opera composed in a language not the audience's, it is invigorating to be reminded that there are other solutions. Unless everyone involved (singers and audience) commands the original language completely, any opera performance falls short of the ideal to some extent, but translation into the vernacular is an option that should not be abandoned: it offers rewards not to be had any other way.

In this recording, from 1975 live performances, we can hear the argument made in the most eloquent possible way: by a well-prepared cast under a great conductor, using a translation (Andrew Porter's justly famous one) exceptionally sensitive to stress, meaning and sound. At many points -- Wotan's narrative, his farewell, Brunnhilde's foretelling of Siegmund's death -- it cuts through with a profound communicative directness that even a lifetime of studying and understanding German as a foreign language cannot equal. And it thereby reminds us of the curious paradox that those operas most dependent on detailed setting of the original libretto (not just those by Wagner, but Pelleas, Wozzeck and the ...