site.btaSofia Opera to Perform Wagner's "Die Walküre" in Skopje on May 18

The Sofia Opera and Ballet will present Wagner's Die Walküre at the 52nd May Opera Nights in Skopje on May 18, the opera house said on Wednesday.

The production is directed by Plamen Kartaloff. Evan-Alexis Christ is the conductor. The set design is by Hans Kudlich, and the costumes by Hristiana Mihaleva-Zorbalieva. Appearing in the lead parts will be Thomas Hall as Wotan, Mariana Zvetkova as Fricka, Martin Iliev as Siegmund, Angel Hristov as Hunding, Gergana Rusekova as Brünnhilde, and Tsvetana Bandalovska as Sieglinde.

Orce Istkovski, Artistic Director of the Skopje National Opera, described the staging of Wagner's work as "the most exclusive event of the festival."

"Wagner's opera Die Walküre, which will be performed by the Sofia Opera and Ballet, will be the first performance of Wagner's work on our stage," www.    republika.mk pointed out.

Die Walküre premiered in July 2023 during the Wagner Festival in Sofia, after an October 2022 staging at the Königswinkel Festival in Füssen. Then, in December 2023, the second part of Wagner's Ring was the closing performance of the Opera and Ballet Festival in Stara Zagora (Southeastern Bulgaria).  

"For 15 years now, the Sofia Opera has heroically evolved and asserted a new tradition in Bulgaria's national music culture by opening up new aesthetic vistas with a repertoire of Richard Wagner's globally acclaimed operatic works, upgrading the company's prestige both at home and abroad," the opera house said.

The first Wagner staging abroad was Siegfried in Minsk in 2012, followed by Tristan und Isolde in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in 2015, and all four Ring des Nibelungen operas: Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung, were performed in Füssen, Germany, in 2015. Next, the tetralogy triumphed at Moscow's Bolshoi Theatre in 2018, and a new staging of Die Walküre was presented in Füssen that same season.