Die Walküre, for Arts Update, is the most successful work in Neil Armfield’s production of Der Ring des Nibelungen, now well underway at Arts Centre Melbourne. And this is fitting, Die Walküre being, for some us, the greatest of operas, with a first act of singular perfection, some of the most beautiful passages Wagner ever wrote, and five compelling individual principal roles.

Musically, it could not be more different from Das Rheingold. Here, the mood shifts from ennui to menace to foreboding, then back again. Little happens on stage, and there are long passages without any singing, but there are no longueurs, and the hours pass quickly. By now Wagner has thoroughly mastered the enactment and transformation of emotions through purely orchestral means.