Name: Festival Orchestra: Spano Conducts Wagner, Ohlsson Plays Liszt
Start: 2024-08-18T16:00:00
Location: Michael Klein Music Tent

Tamara Wilson

Garrick Ohlsson

Robert Spano

Christine Goerke

Julianna Smith

Lucy Baker

Lauren Carroll

Lauren Decker

Greer Grimsley

Alexis Seminario

Maria Vasilevskaya

Margaret Macaira Shannon

Camille Robles

Aspen Music Festival

The 75th anniversary season comes to an overpowering conclusion with one of the most spectacular and moving acts in all of opera, the finale of Wagner’s Die Walküre. You’ll immediately recognize the iconic Ride of the Valkyries which opens the act. The eight Valkyries are the products of the god Wotan’s affair with the earth’s wisdom goddess Erda. Their job is to carry slain heroes to the afterlife in Valhalla on their flying horses. At the beginning of the act, Wotan’s favorite daughter Brünnhilde is missing. She finally appears, but not with a fallen warrior. Instead, it’s Sieglinde, whom Wotan had fathered with a wolf along with her twin brother Siegmund. The twins committed incest back in Act One, and now Sieglinde is pregnant with the future hero Siegfried. Wotan’s wife Fricka, goddess of marriage, didn’t approve of the situation, and pressured Wotan to arrange for Siegmund to die in Act Two. Brünnhilde tried to intervene to save Siegmund, enraging Wotan. To punish her defiance, Wotan strips Brünnhilde of her godhood and plans to put her into a magical sleep to be available to the first man who finds her. Horrified by this prospect, Brünnhilde convinces Wotan to surround her by fire so that only a brave hero can awaken her.