Revival of a historical Walküre

The Salzburg Easter Festival, founded 50 years ago by Herbert von Karajan, was launched with a production of Wagner’s “Die Walküre”. To mark the half centenary, the current festival directors commissioned stage director Vera Nemirova to create a new production of the festival’s inaugural work using the original stage set by Günther Schneider-Siemssen. BTR talked to the makers to find out how they reconstructed and translated the piece for the present day.

For the original production, stage designer Günther Schneider-Siemssen (who died in 2015) set Wagner’s opera in a world of abstract mythology. As well as using solid stage decors, he created this world by means of projecting designs on hand-painted glass discs. Thankfully, sketches and written records of his set survive. On the basis of these documents, the workshops were able to reconstruct most of it, and prepare set plans in different variations for the artistic team. And as this “Walküre” was to be a co-production with the Poly Theatre in China, set construction also involved allowing for adjustments for the Chinese production.

In our interview with stage designer Jens Kilian and light designer Olaf Freese, it soon became clear how unusual the commission was. As Jens Kilian said, “First of all, it’s strange to try and get inside someone else’s head and reproduce something you don’t really know exactly how it looked.” Olaf Freese added, “Making a re-creation was something completely new for me, and I had to get my head round it first. The projection models that Schneider-Siemssen used can’t really be reconstructed. Viewing habits have changed significantly, too; we’re used to far more light! But I think Schneider-Siemmsen’s images are still very expressive today.”

Jens Kilian: “We were commissioned to create a production of ‘Die Walküre’ in a contemporary perspective, not to reactivate the original production. Viewing habits have changed over the last 50 years due to media like television, video and cinema. Things that were new then are familiar sights to us now. But the stage set itself, the design by Mr. Schneider-Siemssen, was not changed. The Peking audience was absolutely delighted! We had to make adjustments to the stage set on site. But that gave the singers the major advantage of not having to walk so far.