Die Walküre as the Ring Game
Katharina Wagner makes Ring debut in Shanghai
Catching an afternoon performance of Die Walküre yesterday in the new production by Katharina Wagner that effectively compresses the entire Ring cycle into a single instalment is a peculiar kind of satisfaction, one that embraces Gen Z by underscoring the gaming roots in Der and Her Ring debut: The Ring Game, the End Game, the Puzzle, the Game of the Thrones and the Escape Room saga.
In Katharina Wagner’s hands, all four operas are folded into one: you glimpse the dragon-slaying to come in Siegfried, the mermaids teasing in the fishtank, while Brünnhilde’s ultimate act of redemption is already foreshadowed, almost spoiled, two episodes in advance.
That seemingly “twisted” ending, in which Wotan is left trapped within the ring of fire he himself sets up together with Fricka dead while she strides off into the distance by the elevator, feels less like a narrative gimmick and more like a quietly autobiographical anti-establishment gesture.
Valhalla, here, becomes a vast, functioning live-action Escape Room saga, a profit-driven enterprise feeding off the dead. The Valkyries are harvesters, Wotan the CEO. The opening of Act III, with bodies wrapped and carried, reads as an abstracted image of a concentration camp.
Brünnhilde stands out as the establishment’s anomaly. In the end, through a mix of emotional manipulation, irreverent wit, and decisive action, this heroine stages her own great escape. It leaves one genuinely curious about how this Ring Game will ultimately turn to the End Game, and, more broadly, about how our own time defines the figure of the female hero.
My thanks to Katharina Wagner for a production rich in theatrical suspense, visually coherent stagecraft, finely controlled movement, and striking lighting design, but somewhat at the cost of psychological depth (even the retrieval of Nothung, for instance, lacks any real dramatic flair). And yes, it must be said: a stage without an oversized multimedia screen now feels like the height of sophistication.
There is something almost like a spring outing about attending Wagner in the afternoon. A pleasure, too, to share lunch with Miranda, to have Miss Peach step in as my idol host for the post-performance recording, and to enjoy lively conversations with Japanese critic Takashi Kinase and friends from the Tsinghua University Classical Music Society.
