Wagner, Ride of the Valkyries

You might think that performances of a work as popular as this would be easy to find. But I have my own criteria for what qualifies for this series, and it has taken a while to find something suitable. When we released our list of Music for Boys, this was the only one of the compositions that had not already been featured as a Friday Performance Pick for that very reason. Now I have solved that problem.

The “Ride of the Valkyries” opens Act III of Richard Wagner’s Die Walküre (the Valkyries), the second opera in his magnificent 4-opera cycle The Ring of the Nibelungen. Stripped of the vocal parts, “Ride of the Valkyries” makes a good stand-alone concert showpiece. (Wagner opposed this idea, but the publishers couldn’t resist.) And, of course, this well-known music does make great accompaniment to a film with helicopters flying into battle as proved by Francis Ford Coppola in his 1979 film Apocalypse Now.

In Norse mythology, the Valkyries were supernatural female figures that choose who will live or die in battle. The text for Wagner’s four-opera cycle is based on the Volsung Saga and the story of Sigurd and Brynhild (called Siegfried and Brunhilde in the The Ring). When the ride occurs in the opera, the Rhine maidens (Valkyries) are assembling to transport fallen heroes to Valhalla, the hall of the gods. Using this unforgettable music, these warrior-ladies gallop across the sky on horses, singing their battle cries.