'His is the art of translating, by subtle gradations, all that is excessive, immense, ambitious in spiritual and natural mankind. On listening to this ardent and despotic music, one feels at times as though one discovered again, painted in the depths of a gathering darkness torn asunder by dreams, the dizzy imaginations induced by opium.” This is how Charles Baudelaire, one of Richard Wagner's most enthusiastic followers, described what the Ring of the Nibelung, a 15-hour tetralogy forming one of the most grandiose epics in music history, meant to him. Of the four operas, it is perhaps Die Walküre that has the greatest number of musical passages to become established on non-operatic concert programmes, such as the sweeping storm music, Siegmund's Spring Song, the Ride of the Valkyries, and finally Wotan's Farewell and the Magic Fire Music.
South African-born Johan Botha has been at the vanguard of international opera life since 1993. He has been a regular guest at New York's Metropolitan Opera, Milan's La Scala, the Salzburg Festival, and has won roles in audio recordings of Wagnerian operas conducted by such world-famous conductors as Thielemann, Barenboim, Bychkov and de Billy. Walter Fink, bearer of the Wiener Staatsoper's prestigious "Kammersänger” title, has portrayed some 70 characters in 650 performances at the renowned opera house. Danish baritone Johan Reuter has been a member of the Danish National Opera since 1996, and played Wotan, the chief of the gods, at the Bayreuth Festival's 2010 production of Das Rheingold. He has appeared in productions conducted by Franz Welser-Möst, Valery Gergiev, Zubin Mehta, Marek Janowski and Kent Nagano, among others.
Anja Kampe is one of the greatest Sieglindes of our time: in the past three years, she has portrayed Hunding's wife at the Bayreuth Festival, where she has appeared in a total of nine years, while audiences at the Washington National Opera got to see her in the same role, partnered with Plácido Domingo, in 2003 and 2007. Atala Schöck has worked together with conductors such as Pierre Boulez, Daniele Gatti and Philippe Jordan. Since 2004, she has sung at the Bayreuth Festival on a total of eight occasions, and has been involved in Müpa's Wagner in Budapest Opera Festival since the outset.
Evelyn Herlitzius made her début in 1997, as Leonora (Fidelio) at the Dresden Semperoper, where she has since portrayed Venus (Tannhäuser), Kundry (Parsifal) and Brünnhilde (Die Walküre, Siegfried, Götterdämmerung). She has sung in Deutsche Oper Berlin's Ring cycle, and at Milan's La Scala (Ortrud, Lohengrin). She made her Bayreuth début in 2002, as Brünnhilde, and in the years to come she was invited
back for the entire Ring, as well as for the roles of Kundry, Ortrud and Isolde. In Berlin and New York, at the invitation of Sir Simon Rattle, she sang Brünnhilde in a concert version of Die Walküre together with the Berlin Philharmonic. She has appeared in major opera houses in Europe and Japan, as well as in Salzburg and Aix-en-Provence. In 2002 she was recognised with the title of "Kammersängerin”, and has also been nominated for a Grammy Award.

More information about the Wagner in Budapest Opera Festival here.

Presented by: Müpa Budapest