24 March-6 April 2005. Conducted by Jeffrey Tate, directed by Federico Tiezzi, with Christopher Ventris, Nina Stemme, Kristinn Sigmundsson.

Richard Wagners Die Walkre, the second work of Der Ring des Nibelungen, will be performed at the S. Carlo in Naples during the Easter period (24 March-6 April). Performing it separately from the other three works is always somewhat risky, because the audience finds itself in the middle of the cycle, without knowing what has gone before or how the story will finish. There is also the problem of the leitmotifs of the characters and the action; listening to them out of sequence and without the necessary preparation cuts into the musical and dramatic unity of the whole Ring cycle. However, performing Die Walkre on its own often occurs in theatres, even in Germany, and the music is so beautiful that it is always worth listening to, even if the conditions are not ideal. In Naples the director is Federico Tiezzi and the conductor is Jeffrey Tate, who always seems more than at ease with late 19th-century music than that of the modern period. Die Walkre is an uneasy work: incest, rebellion against parental authority, respect of social conventions and a sense of guilt are just a few of the themes that are addressed. Paolo Di Nicola