My special offers

Prices

    0
    300
    0€
    300€

Show / Event

Venue

Experience

Calendar

  • Between   and 

Prices

Edward Burtynsky, courtesy Flowers Gallery, London / Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto

Edward Burtynsky, courtesy Flowers Gallery, London / Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto

Opera

RING Festival

Die Walküre

Richard Wagner

Opéra Bastille

from 07 to 17 November 2026

from €110 to €270

5h00 with 2 intervals

Synopsis

The Paris Opera continues its exploration of Richard Wagner’s colossal Ring, directed by Calixto Bieito. After the final scene of The Rhinegold, in which the gods ascend to Walhalla, The Valkyrie, the second part of the cycle, focuses on humans in the form of twins Sieglinde and Siegmund.

While their irrepressible, incestuous passion unleashes the wrath of Fricka, the goddess of marriage, it deeply moves the Valkyrie Brünnhilde, prompting her to defy her father, the god Wotan.

To express the power of human love, but also the contradictions of a god who wishes to engender a being who is free yet subject to his own will, Richard Wagner writes music that is by turns lyrical and sensual, fiery and heroic, like the famous “Ride of the Valkyries”.    

Duration : 5h00 with 2 intervals

Language : German

Surtitle : French / English

  • Opening

  • First part 65 min

  • Intermission 45 min

  • Second part 90 min

  • Intermission 30 min

  • Third part 70 min

  • End

Show acts

Detail of acts

Act 1

First scene
Pursued by enemies, Siegmund takes refuge in an unfamiliar house. His weapons are shattered. Sieglinde appears and gives the stranger something to drink. She informs him that the master of the house is Hunding and welcomes him on his behalf. Siegmund seeks to flee. He does not wish to see the misfortune that dogs him strike Sieglinde. But the latter urges him to remain: here too, misfortune has made its home.

Second scene
Enter Hunding. Struck b y t he r esemblance between Siegmund and Sieglinde, he asks the stranger his name. The latter replies that his unhappy life forces him to call himself Wehwalt (misfortune’s chosen one). He recounts his childhood: his father was called Wolfe. He grew up with his mother and twin sister. One day when father and son were out hunting, his mother was murdered and his sister abducted. He subsequently lost track of his father and ever since has led the life of a wanderer. One day he sought to protect a young girl who was to be married to a man she did not love. The girl was killed and his weapons destroyed. Since then, he has been a hunted man. Hunding informs him that he himself has been called to take vengeance on him. Siegmund is under the enemy’s roof. However, Hunding will not break the oath of hospitality and puts off the duel until the following morning. He leaves the room accompanied by Sieglinde.

Third scene
Left alone, Siegmund thinks of the sword his father promised him and that he was to find in time of distress. Sieglinde appears and begs the stranger to flee. In turn, she tells her story. The very day she was forced to marry Hunding, an old man with a terrifying glare appeared and thrust a sword into the ash tree. Only the wondrous hero able to tear the weapon from the tree trunk would merit it. Siegmund at last understands his father’s promise: he is in the presence of his sister and fiancée. As the couple fall into each other’s arms, springtime enters the house blessing their love. Siegmund wrenches the sword from the tree trunk. An ecstatic Sieglinde baptises her brother with the name of Siegmund (the conqueror).

Act 2

First scene
The god Wotan invites his daughter, the Valkyrie Brünnhilde, to prepare for battle: she is to defend Siegmund against Hunding. In the name of the sacred bonds of marriage of which she is the guardian, Fricka demands that the adulterous and incestuous couple be punished. Wotan judges an oath uniting two people who do not love each other to be irreligious. But Fricka complains that Wotan seeks only to protect the couple, the fruit of his infidelity. Wotan explains that to preserve their immortality a hero who is free and emancipated from the law of the gods must be born: this will be Siegmund. But Fricka knows how to outsmart his ruses: Siegmund is in no way emancipated, for he is continually protected by Wotan. She solemnly requests of Wotan that neither he nor Brünnhilde protect Siegmund anymore. Overwhelmed, Wotan consents to this sacrifice.

Second scene
Going back to the very beginning, Wotan tells Brünnhilde the story of the ring: how it was stolen by Alberich and the ruse he used to take it from the latter; how Alberich placed a curse on the ring and his decision, on the advice of Erda, to give it to the giants in payment for the construction of his palace, Valhalla ; his visit to the goddess Erda to discover his future and the child they conceived, Brünnhilde herself ; the army she forms with her eight sisters, escorting warriors who have died in combat to Valhalla where they form an invincible troop. If Alberich were to obtain the ring, he could bring Wotan’s reign to an end. Having himself given it to Fafner, Wotan cannot take it back. Only a free man emancipated from the gods can do this. There remains only one thing that Wotan desires: the end of the reign of the gods. But Fricka has seen through him: Siegmund is no freer than the others. Wotan must sacrifice him and he orders Brünnhilde to abide by his wife’s wishes.

Third scene.
Sieglinde and Siegmund are on the run. Siegmund wants to confront Hunding. Suffering from hallucinations, Sieglinde sees Hunding pursuing them with hismen and a pack of hounds. She sees Siegmund attacked by the dogs and the sword broken into pieces. Nevertheless, she falls asleep in Siegmund’s arms.

Fourth scene
In accordance with Wotan’s orders, Brünnhilde announces to Siegmund his coming death. It is she that will escort him to Valhalla. When she reveals that Sieglinde will not be able to accompany him, he refuses to follow her. He scoffs at Hunding’s threat: his father’s sword is invincible. The Valkyrie informs him that Wotan has taken away the sword’s power. Siegmund is prepared to kill Sieglinde and then himself. Deeply moved, Brünnhilde decides to protect him from Hunding and bring him victory.

Fifth scene
Hunding approaches. Siegmund is preparing to strike Hunding when Wotan appears and breaks the sword. Hunding kills the unarmed Siegmund. Brünnhilde flees with Sieglinde on her horse. Wotan strikes down Hunding, who falls dead at the god’s feet. The god sets off in pursuit of Brünnhilde resolved to punish her disobedience.

Act 3

First scene.
The Valkyries appear one after the other, each bringing back a dead hero to Valhalla for Wotan’s army. Brünnhilde appears with Sieglinde and asks for her sisters’ help. But they are all frightened by her disobedience. Not wishing to remain alive without Siegmund, Sieglinde asks Brünnhilde to kill her. However, Brünnhilde reveals that Sieglinde is expecting Siegmund’s child and that she must live for him. She tells her to go and take refuge in the forest where  Fafner keeps the ring, a place that Wotan fears and avoids. Sieglinde flees just as Wotan appears.

Second scene
The Valkyries try to intervene on Brünnhilde’s behalf but Wotan reprimands them: they must not protect the rebel. Brünnhilde then appears and asks her father to pronounce the sentence. For having fought against him, Wotan imposes a terrible punishment: He exiles Brünnhilde from Valhalla and excludes her from the race of the immortals. Brünnhilde will go into a long sleep and belong to the first man to awaken her. She will be obliged to give up her virginity to him and become his servant.

Third scene.
Wotan and Brünnhilde are alone. The latter attempts to justify her crime. She claims she was only carrying out Wotan’s orders. Wotan cannot help being moved: Brünnhilde has carried out his deepest wish. She asks one last favour of him: that he does not give her up to the first coward that appears, but that only a hero worthy by birth may deliver her. Wotan accepts her wish and surrounds her sleeping body with a wall of flames. Only a man freer than himself and who does not fear him will be able to deliver her. Wotan kisses Brünnhilde one last time.

Artists

First evening in three acts of Der Ring des Nibelungen (1870)

Creative team

Cast

The Paris Opera Orchestra and Chorus

Media

PABLO HERAS-CASADO about DIE WALKÜRE & SIEGFRIED (interview)
PABLO HERAS-CASADO about DIE WALKÜRE & SIEGFRIED (interview)
  • The Ring Cycle and the cinema

    The Ring Cycle and the cinema

    Read the article

  • Les Grands Entretiens with Alexander Neef and Pablo Heras-Casado

    Les Grands Entretiens with Alexander Neef and Pablo Heras-Casado

    Watch the video

  • Brünnhilde, the emancipated Valkyrie - Interview with Tamara Wilson

    Brünnhilde, the emancipated Valkyrie - Interview with Tamara Wilson

    Watch the video

© Collection Christophel

The Ring Cycle and the cinema

Read the article

Wagner, model and source of inspiration for the seventh art

10 min

The Ring Cycle and the cinema

By Laurent Guido

With his Bayreuth theatre, did Richard Wagner anticipate cinema? Often compared to the Wagnerian Gesamkunstwerk on the strength of its all-embracing dimension, the art of cinema has regularly drawn on the unequalled musical and dramatic substance ofThe Ring of the Nibelung.

“The most famous, the most performed, the most thrilling, and the most recorded opera cycle”: these eulogistic words are from a promotional text for the video release of Richard Wagner’sThe Ring of the Nibelung by the Metropolitan Opera of New York (2010 – 2012). This same text boasts, amongst other things, of the hundreds of thousands of people that watched performances of the Ring Cycle, not only at the Met., but above all in cinemas the world over, via satellite broadcast[1]. This emphasis on a technological dissemination of Wagnerian opera harks back to one of the objectives of the earliest promoters of the audio-visual industries. Indeed, from the period of the pioneer Thomas Alva Edison at the end of the 19th century onwards, the eventual possibility of linking up the apparatus for recording both sound and image had nourished the dream of offering remote populations the most spectacular of urban entertainments. As for the public demonstration on 6th August 1926 of Vitaphone’s motion picture sound process, it took place exactly fifty years after the first performancein 1876 of the complete Ring cycle for the inauguration of the Festpielhaus in Bayreuth. The specific arrangements of the Wagnerian stage (darkness, a concealed orchestra, the focus on the “stage image”, the illusion of depth by the bringing forward of the proscenium...) prefigure certain characteristics of the cinema auditorium equipped with loud-speakers.
This vision of Wagner as a prophet of cinema[2]has influenced aesthetic reflections on the filmic medium. Such reflections have been inspired by the concept of the Gesamkunstwerk, as it is presented in Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft(The Artwork of the Future) (1849) or Oper und Drama(Opera and Drama) (1851), to signal the emergence at the heart of technical and scientific modernity of a great “synthetic theatre”, bringing about a “renaissance of Tragedy”[3]. Echoing the frustration experienced by Nietzsche regarding the staging of TheRing at Bayreuth[4], as well as certain reservations on the part of the composer himself[5], these theoreticians saw in cinema a way of overcoming the supposed limits of stage production. As the critic Emile Vuillermozclaimed in 1927, “... If he had been born fifty years later, Wagner would have written his Ring cycle not for the stage but for the screen. [...] If he had had free recourse to the prestigious resources of cinema, he would have built, not a theatre, but a cinema at Bayreuth.”[6]The film-maker Abel Gance took a more ironic view: “A new formula for opera will be born. We will hear the singers without seeing them, oh joy, and the Ride of the Walkyries will be made feasible.”[7] By this argument – still regularly put forward today in this numerical age – the techniques of cinema are capable of realising the slightest nuances of a dreaming poet-musician’s imagination, more particularly in the Ring cycle, underwater pursuits, air-born gallops, fantastic combats, beings that become invisible and the progressive transformations of the sets. But the cinema has above all furthered the ideal of dynamic stylisation which animated, at least with the work of AdolpheAppia onwards, the majority of renovators of the Wagnerian stage. As the experiments of a film-maker like S.M. Eisenstein (director of the 1940 Bolshoi Walküre and inventor of a “vertical” production closely linking musical and visual gestures) demonstrate, cinematic procedures aim to provide directors with a vast iconic palette, as subtle, malleable and poly-expressive as the music itself.

Les Nibelungen - la mort de Siegfried - Fritz Lang, 1924
Les Nibelungen - la mort de Siegfried - Fritz Lang, 1924 © Collection Christophel
The model of Wagnerian opera profoundly inspired the codes of large-scale cinema productions, which were established during the silent movie period through showings using symphony orchestras. The release of Der Nibelungen(Fritz Lang, 1924) in this context represents a major event. Although far removed in conception from the Wagnerian version of the legend, the film’s early showings worldwide,which were accompanied by extracts borrowed from the Bayreuth master, made constant references to the Ring cycle. More generally, the symbiosis between drama and music, as championed by Wagner, occupied pride of place amongst narrative procedures that have continued to dominate, even today, the production of films. The use of leitmotif was thus imposed on the musical system established in Hollywood during the thirties and forties by composers emerging from European post-romantic culture (Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Max Steiner, Franz Waxman)[8]. A French Wagner specialist and contemporary of these composers enthused over their work: “... anyone who wanted to analyse the Ring cycle bar by bar to compare it with such accomplished film scores [...] would no doubt be astonished to discover that Wagner’s music was, so to speak, written for the cinema”.

This alliance between artistic idealism and the cultural industry, as the more radical critics denounced it[9], has manifested itself in contemporary blockbusters such as the Star Wars franchise (on-going since 1977) and, more directly still, Lord of the Rings (based on Tolkien, 2001-2003) that ally narrative breadth and large-scale spectacle. Not only do the internationally popular symphonic scores for these productions make thorough use of leitmotif, but their narratives draw on the mythological world already reinvented in The Ring of the Nibelung[10].
This relationship between the mass media and the work of Wagner also appears in the fragmentation of the operas into individual numbers, that is, the selection from them of “greatest hits”, on the traditional model of concert arias or song anthologies. Numerous films have indeed had recourse to extracts from the Ringcycle in the most diverse contexts (from drama to cartoons, as well as burlesque, documentaries, science fiction etc.) in order to offer an epic or dramatic counterpoint to the visual action. A memorable shot from Birth (Jonathan Glazer 2004) testifies to this. The camera focusses at length on the face of the heroine (Nicole Kidman), who is watching a performance of Die Walküre. Although it echoes personal preoccupations that are completely divorced from the musical storm raging off camera, the tormented Prelude to act I is marvellously adapted to the expression of her inwardly troubled state.

Excalibur, John Boorman, 1981, avec Nigel Terry
Excalibur, John Boorman, 1981, avec Nigel Terry © Collection Christophel
The poignant, funereal harmonies relayed by the best-known passages of TheRing have for many years imposed a morbid vision of Wagner, stamped with a sombre solemnity. Whilst some have sought to appropriate this musical power, others have reduced it to swingeing ideological caricature, harking back unfailingly to Hitler’s infamous appropriation of Wagner. Thus Siegfried’s Trauermusikin Götterdämmerunghas been associated just as easily with the first leader of the Soviet Revolution in Three Songs about Lenin (D. Vertov, 1934), or with the Arthurian heroes of John Boorman’s 1981 Excalibur, as with the implacable attitude of the Nazi officers in American fiction from the forties onwards, in which intensive use is made of Siegfried’s leitmotif to qualify the German aggressor, particularly in the propaganda films of Frank Capra. Over and above their function in ridiculing the robust phenotype of Wagnerian heroines (from Bugs Bunny to Fellini), the rousing accents and galvanising virtues of the Ride of the Valkyries haspunctuated the cavalcade of the Ku Klux Klan in The Birth of a Nation (D. W. Griffith, 1915), then the German and Japanese air raids during Axis news footage during the Second World War, before culminating in a more ambiguous manner – the music being broadcast by the protagonists themselves – during the celebrated helicopter attack in Apocolypse Now (F. F. Coppola, 1979).

Over and above such totalitarian connotations, cinematic references to Wagner have also evoked the mythical backgrounds of his music dramas. More than anyone else, Jürgen Syberberg, in both his theoretical writings and his films, sought tirelessly to explore the multiple facets of the great composer in order to secure his redemption. His complex portraits of King Ludwig (1972) and of Hitler (1977) are peppered with extracts from the Ring Cycle illustrating as much the emphatic perversity of oppressive powers (the Funeral March from Siegfried, the Descent intoNibelheim...) as the resurgence of the romantic ideals perverted by the 3rd Reich and by the materialism of capitalist societies (the abundantly lyrical finale of Götterdämmerung)[11]. More recently, in The New World (Terrence Malick, 2007), the Prelude to Das Rhingoldsignalled the ambivalent attitude of the first settlers on American soil, ranging from romantic pantheism to the conquest of virgin territory. As for the Entrance of the Gods into Valhalla from the same opera, in Alien Covenant (Ridley Scott, 2017), it marks the triumph ofan artificial being’spretentionsto divine status of. All these instances demonstrate the extent to which TheRing remains influential in the troubled imagination of the 21stcentury, whether to evoke the weight of history or to reflect on the stakes involved in an eminently technological future.

[1] “Product Description” from the Universal Classics DVD and Blue Ray boxed edition.
[2] The idea has been put forward by authors like Claude Levi-Strauss and Friedrich Kittler. See my work De Wagner au cinema. Histoire d’unefantasmagorie, Mimesis, Paris, 2019. 
[3]RicciottoCanudo, “La Naissance d’unesixième Art [1911]”, L’Usine aux images, Séguier-Arte, Paris, 1995, p.34.
[4] F. Nietzsche, Le Cas Wagner followed by Neitzschecontre Wagner, Gallimard, Paris, 1991, p. 67.
[5] On Wagner’s quip as to the possibility of “invisible theatre”, see Carl Dahlhaus, L’Idée de la musiqueabsolue, Contrechamps, Geneva, 1997, [1978] p. 36.
[6] Jacques Bourgeois: “Musiquedramatique et cinéma”; Revue du Cinéma, no. 10, February 1948, pp. 25-33.
[7] Theodor W. Adorno: Essay on Wagner, Gallimard, Paris, 1966 [1962] and (with Hans Eisler), The Music of Cinema, L’Arche, Paris, 1972.
[8] The publicity for the video edition of the Met Ring cycle mentioned above did not hesitate to describe Wagner’s work as “the Lord of the Rings of the classical music world”!    
[9]Vuillermoz, “La musique des images”, L’Artcinématographique; III, 1927, pp. 53-57.
[10] A. Gance: “Le temps de l’imageestvenu!”,Ibid; p. 94, pp. 101-102. 
[11] On this considerable contribution to perceptions of Wagner, as on that by Werner Herzog – who also uses extracts from the Ring in several of his films, oscillating constantly between irony and the sublime, see my book, Cinéma, mythe et idéologie. Échos de Wagner chez Hans-JurgenSyberberg et Werner Herzog,Hermann, Paris, 2020.    

Die Walküre

Opera

Die Walküre

Richard Wagner

Opéra Bastille
from 07 to 17 Nov 2026

Discover
Les Grands Entretiens with Alexander Neef and Pablo Heras-Casado

Watch the video

Alexander Neef, Pablo Heras-Casado

20:45 min

Les Grands Entretiens with Alexander Neef and Pablo Heras-Casado

By Isabelle Stibbe

When an artist meets the Paris Opera's General Manager or its Director of Dance, what do they discuss? In this new series entitled Les Grands Entretiens, the Paris Opera lifts the veil on the artistic line-up of new productions for the 25/26 season. The choice of guest artists, the key themes, the directors' creative intentions and the choreographic styles: these exclusive twenty-minute exchanges offer you the first keys to the works that will soon be on the bill. 

What does the Ring represent for an opera house? On the occasion of the new productions of Die Walküre and Siegfried, Paris Opera General Manager Alexander Neef discusses the unique aspects of this colossal undertaking with conductor Pablo Heras-Casado.   

Siegfried

Opera

Siegfried

Richard Wagner

Opéra Bastille
from 17 to 31 Jan 2026

Discover
Brünnhilde, the emancipated Valkyrie - Interview with Tamara Wilson

Watch the video

4:50 min

Brünnhilde, the emancipated Valkyrie - Interview with Tamara Wilson

By Marion Mirande

Daughter of the goddess Erda and the god Wotan, raised as an obedient warrior, the Valkyrie Brünnhilde breaks free from her father after discovering love and compassion.

Tamara Wilson performs one of the most subtle yet powerful roles in Richard Wagner’s repertoire in the new production of Die Walküre at the Opéra Bastille.

Die Walküre

Opera

Die Walküre

Richard Wagner

Opéra Bastille
from 11 to 30 Nov 2025

Discover

Access and services

Opéra Bastille

Place de la Bastille

75012 Paris

Public transport

Underground Bastille (lignes 1, 5 et 8), Gare de Lyon (RER)

Bus 29, 69, 76, 86, 87, 91, N01, N02, N11, N16

Calculate my route
Car park

Parking Indigo Opéra Bastille 1 avenue Daumesnil 75012 Paris

Book your spot at a reduced price
  • Cloakrooms

    Free cloakrooms are at your disposal. The comprehensive list of prohibited items is available here.

In both our venues, discounted tickets are sold at the box offices from 30 minutes before the show:

  • €35 tickets for under-28s, unemployed people (with documentary proof less than 3 months old) and senior citizens over 65 with non-taxable income (proof of tax exemption for the current year required)
  • €70 tickets for senior citizens over 65

Get samples of the operas and ballets at the Paris Opera gift shops: programmes, books, recordings, and also stationery, jewellery, shirts, homeware and honey from Paris Opera.

Opéra Bastille
  • Open 1h before performances and until performances end
  • Get in from within the theatre’s public areas
  • For more information: +33 1 40 01 17 82
Online

Opéra Bastille

Place de la Bastille

75012 Paris

Public transport

Underground Bastille (lignes 1, 5 et 8), Gare de Lyon (RER)

Bus 29, 69, 76, 86, 87, 91, N01, N02, N11, N16

Calculate my route
Car park

Parking Indigo Opéra Bastille 1 avenue Daumesnil 75012 Paris

Book your spot at a reduced price
  • Cloakrooms

    Free cloakrooms are at your disposal. The comprehensive list of prohibited items is available here.

In both our venues, discounted tickets are sold at the box offices from 30 minutes before the show:

  • €35 tickets for under-28s, unemployed people (with documentary proof less than 3 months old) and senior citizens over 65 with non-taxable income (proof of tax exemption for the current year required)
  • €70 tickets for senior citizens over 65

Get samples of the operas and ballets at the Paris Opera gift shops: programmes, books, recordings, and also stationery, jewellery, shirts, homeware and honey from Paris Opera.

Opéra Bastille
  • Open 1h before performances and until performances end
  • Get in from within the theatre’s public areas
  • For more information: +33 1 40 01 17 82
Online

Discover opera and ballet in another way

QR code

Dive into the Opera world and get insights on opera and pop culture or ballet and cinema. Scan this code to access all the quiz and blindtests on your mobile.

opera logo

3 min

Die Walküre

5 questions about: The Valkyrie

Want to know more? Click on the + at the end of our session. It’s that simple!

Discover

Partners

  • Grande Mécène de la saison

  • With the exceptional support of Bertrand and Nathalie Ferrier, Élisabeth and Bertrand Meunier

  • Principal Sponsor of the Paris Opera

Media and technical partners

Immerse in the Paris Opera universe

Follow us

Corporate Partnerships

Palais Garnier

Place de l’Opéra
75009 Paris

Opéra Bastille

Place de la Bastille
75012 Paris

Subscribe to newsletter

Back to top