The Cry of the Valkyrie: Feminism and Corporality in the Copenhagen ‘Ring’. Nila Parly investigates a major new cycle on DVD

As the audience of the Copenhagen Ring, we see and experience everything filtered through Brünnhilde’s reminiscing personality. The effect of this is that parts of the immense contrasts in the Wagnerian narrative, which are otherwise often felt as ostentatious Sturm und Drang from a bygone epoch, all of a sudden become very natural, very recognisable, very topical, because in a moment of remembrance some – on the surface rather small – events may acquire mythological dimensions in connection with other memories, while other things are remembered with sober precision. The production takes advantage of these differences by switching gears between the soberly remembered parts, which are played out in a normal scale, and the dreamy, unrealistic, blown-up moments, which Brünnhilde herself experiences as ’mythological’.