Crocs Away! David Ames is impressed with Melbourne Opera’s crocodile-hunting ‘Die Walküre’ and its all-Australian cast

As Bradley Daley’s Siegmund entered at the start of Act I of Die Walküre, his appearance was strikingly reminiscent of the late ‘crocodile hunter’ Steve Irwin. While this may have been a subtle reference to the crocodiles seen in Castorf’s atrocious 2013 Bayreuth Siegfried, the immediate response of ‘Crikey!’ was an appropriate reaction to this superb presentation of Wagner’s second Ring instalment, as Melbourne Opera reached halfway in assembling only the fifth production of Wagner’s tetralogy presented in Australia and just the third home-grown one.