By Nick Miller
It’s one of those instantly recognisable pieces of music, Ride of the Valkyries, that insistent, thunderous, galloping refrain deployed memorably in Apocalypse Now: dah dah d-d-DAH DAH!
But what does it feel like to sing it?
Opera singer Rosamund Illing is playing the lead Valkyrie in Melbourne Opera’s production of Die Walkure.Credit: Joe Armao
“It’s like someone’s literally given you an injection of joy,” says soprano Rosamund Illing. “It’s so exciting... You get another gear, it’s like a hyperdrive... you sing your lungs out for half an hour.”
She’s playing the lead Valkyrie (of eight) in Wagner’s epic opera Die Walkure, to be staged this month by Melbourne Opera. They have to wait a couple of hours until the third act for their entrance... but what an entrance.
They had the production’s first “sitzprobe” the other day, a rehearsal with the full 90-piece orchestra (they’ve had to knock out the back of Her Majesty’s orchestra pit to fit them all in).
“There are at least two tubas, 36 brass players. And if you know anything about brass players, they’re all salty seadogs, they’re likely to give it a bit of welly. It can be really overwhelming. I thought we were going to take the ceiling off. And the roof. It was that big.”
But as well as joy there will be another feeling for Illing coming onto that stage, she says: gratitude. It’s her first return to live opera since 2015.
“At my age, there’s not many roles that you can cast me in,” she says. “I had had some emotional difficulties, and the result of that was that I lost my voice. I was broken.
“And it’s taken me four years now to work through with psychologists and kinesiologists and various [experts].”
Her voice came back gradually, but at the start of the pandemic her chiropractor warned her that she needed to start singing again, to restore her lung capacity.
The gods depart for Valhalla in Melbourne Opera’s 2021 Das Rheingold.Credit: Robin Halls / MO
So when she heard Melbourne Opera was putting on Die Walkure, she rang up and pleaded to sing a Valkyrie.
Conductor Anthony Negus and director Suzanne Chaundy were delighted to have her. Illing is one of Australia’s most renowned sopranos: she has performed at the world’s greatest opera houses, including as Musetta in La Boheme with Placido Domingo as Rodolfo, at Covent Garden. In concerts she has sung with the world’s great orchestras and conductors.
Conductor Anthony Negus says he’s thrilled to have her, “a huge, great star” as part of a fine cast.
The show is a challenge, there’s even a German word for it: fünfstündigenopernaufführungsangst or “fear of five-hour operas”. But despite Walkure’s four hour (plus intervals) running time, as the last bar fades away Negus always finds himself invigorated, he says.
“In that moment you just ‘live’ for a moment and think ‘oh my god, this has been something really special’. In the immediate aftermath of a performance I generally enjoy having a drink and a bit of company, and then the following day zonking [out].”
As a sought-after Wagner specialist this is his third Walkure in less than a year, having conducted it for Longborough Festival in June and English National Opera in December.
“It has a huge great range musically, emotionally, because Wagner is really giving expression to so much that’s new and such powerful emotions,” Negus says. Part of the challenge is to find a “pulse” to the piece even in the quietest passages, he says.
“All the slowest bits need to have a flow to them, and the quickest bits need to be not too quick otherwise they won’t make sense.”
But at times he gives the orchestra permission to “go wild”, he says.
Another trap is that famous Ride of the Valkyries: in some hands it can turn into “tiddlywinks” if it’s tripped through too lightly. Negus says you’ve got to put the stress at the beginning of each cycle of the theme, to give it weight, a heartbeat.
Chaundy, the director, says her main aim is to “tell the story really well”. She doesn’t want to impose a modern interpretation or concept, she’s “embracing the fantasy elements in it” – the popularity of shows including Game of Thrones have shown fantasy is accepted as an adult genre.
Walkure’s story is about the “power of love and the transformative nature of love”, she says. Yes, the women in the story “are treated quite badly, but they’re not weak in it, they come out strong... they bring about massive changes in the structure of the world”.
On a practical level, directing a show involving more than 140 cast, musicians and crew in the age of Omicron has proven a challenge. Almost every role has a “cover” who can step in, rehearsed in a different room at different times.
“But we’re all on eggshells now that we’re in the theatre,” Chaundy admits.
Die Walkure is at Her Majesty’s Theatre from February 9-16 and at Bendigo’s Ulumbarra on February 27.
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