The start is Hollywood-ready.

Exciting music speaks of hastily pulsating movement, an exhausted man on the run comes to a primitive hut, opens the door, sees nobody and collapses.

The beginning of Richard Wagner's music drama "Die Walküre" draws the audience with orchestral power and yet designed as a three-person chamber play directly into the world story about the "Ring of the Nibelung", which deals with gods and demigods as well as with humanity.

That is exactly what General Music Director Daniel Cohen had promised and selected the first act of Die Walküre with further excerpts for a concert performance at the Staatstheater Darmstadt.

Guido Holze

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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In an interview with the FAZ, Cohen described the extent to which Wagner's music was viewed as a symbol of Nazi Germany in his native Israel, withdrawn from rational discussion by the trauma caused by it, and how he found access to it outside of teaching.

The premiere of “Lohengrin”, which was postponed for a long time due to the pandemic, is now to be his first fully conducted Wagner opera on May 8th in Darmstadt.

In this respect, the concert version of "Valkyrie" was optimal preparation for him, the state orchestra and the audience, who were used to the grand sound of opera.

An impressive balancing act

You meet two people at the moment when they recognize themselves: Siegmund and Sieglinde, the twins who grew up separately and who immediately erupt in incestuous love. Cohen made the dramatic progression easy to follow in broadly conceived lines, making it clear how much Wagner's entire structure, including the forward and backward leitmotifs, is based on the orchestra. The fact that it was possible to balance the sound on the open stage, without being dampened by the orchestra pit, in such a way that the singing voices still penetrated, was an achievement in itself.

It wobbled a lot here and there, especially in the horns and trumpets, and in the purely instrumental sections the sound of the coarse and sometimes naive sounding brass was too dominant. Nevertheless, the possibility opened up to penetrate beyond the scenic design and with the text that can be followed in the program booklet to deeper levels of meaning and symbolism.

In the strongest moments it was a ringing entelechy: Siegmund and Sieglinde feel one and are destined, as soul and body mates in the strongest love and greatest sin of incest and adultery, to father the "freest of the free", the hero Siegfried. Dorothea Herbert made it palpable from the start how inevitably connected Sieglinde feels to her twin brother, in a soft tone that is easy to understand in the recitative sections, flowing and sung to the line in the aria-like sections. Peter Sonn, who initially seemed very fixated on his grades and his part, opened up the imaginary spaces with "The father promised me a sword" and "Winter storms gave way to the merry moon". The bass Matthew Rose gave a mighty Hunding, but as Wotan in the farewell scene he did not bring out the brokenness of the god figure."Siegfried's Funeral March" fell out of the dramaturgy as an unsuitable orchestral insertion from "Siegfried", before the "Valkyrie Ride".

Repeat on January 19 from 7:30 p.m