No Nothung: Barry Millington assesses Longborough’s pared-down ‘Walküre’

Review of Die Walküre, directed Lane, conducted Negus, Longborough, 2021.

November 2021, Volume 15, Number 3, 73–4.

Visitors approaching Longborough Festival Opera for its thirtieth season this year were confronted by a circus-style big top decked out in garish red and yellow, inside which performances of Così fan tutte, Il ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria and The Cunning Little Vixen took place. The keenly awaited Die Walküre was spared that indignity, though its seven performances, for which it was billed as a ‘concert production’, took place in front of drastically reduced audiences in the theatre proper, the string section of the orchestra on stage with the singers.