In Wagner’s opera “Die Walküre,” Sieglinde develops in the shadow of controlling men.
“This house and woman belong to Hunding,” she tells a stranger seeking refuge — who turns out to be Siegmund, her brother and lover, and the only man to show her true respect. But later, as Siegmund wonders aloud whether he will kill himself and his partner, rather than facing a future alone in the godly realm of Valhalla, she is fast asleep. Agency over Sieglinde’s life choices passes from one man to another.
How, then, does a performer make her mark while playing a character defined by absence?
The Welsh-Ukrainian soprano Natalya Romaniw provides an answer in Barrie Kosky’s new production of “Die Walküre,” which continues through Saturday at the Royal Opera House in London. (It will be broadcast in cinemas on Wednesday.) She is offering a vividly psychological portrait of a woman whose spiritual core has been shattered, leaving behind a shell of a person, unable to settle in any emotional state.
“It’s important to find the arc,” Romaniw said of Sieglinde’s character development in a recent interview. From a starting point as “the epitome of femininity (very caring, loyal),” the appearance of Siegmund prompts Sieglinde’s “reawakening.” Elation follows, then madness; when Sieglinde awakens from sleep in Act III, describing visions of Hunding’s dogs — a symbol of potential retribution for her infidelity — the weight of guilt and shame drives her into despair. Sieglinde, Romaniw said, concludes by believing “that dishonor is just the end.”
Romaniw has become a regular at Covent Garden. She made her house debut in 2022 by replacing Anna Netrebko in Jonathan Kent’s celebrated production of Puccini’s “Tosca.” Earlier this year, she portrayed a devastating Helena in Mark-Anthony Turnage’s new opera “Festen.” And for “Die Walküre,” Romaniw is jumping in for another A-list soprano, Lise Davidsen, who has bowed out of her engagements because she is pregnant.
Sieglinde is Romaniw’s first major Wagner role. Historically, she has been known as a Puccinian, her lyric soprano more associated with roles like Tosca and Cio-Cio-San. By her own admission, “Wagner’s not something I think about often.”
But for Kosky’s production of the Wagner’s four-opera “Ring,” which is being rolled out over several seasons, the director has sought out singers making role debuts “so they could come with absolutely no preconceptions to the rehearsal,” he said.
Still, Sieglinde is not a role that singers take on at short notice. “I’ve rarely seen a singer come in under that sort of pressure, doing that sort of role in this kind of production, and fearlessly and relentlessly work for seven weeks,” Kosky said.
It’s a risk that has paid off. The Times of London called Romaniw’s “O hehrstes Wunder” scene in Act III “the most thrilling vocal moment in this ‘Ring’ so far.” Antonio Pappano, who is conducting the production, said by email: “The evenness and warmth of the voice and her ability to inject each phrase with the right depth of feeling makes her ideal for this part.” Romaniw, he said, “has made the role her own.”
ROMANIW GREW UP near Swansea, Wales, and was raised by her mother, a police officer working on domestic violence cases, and her grandparents. Nobody in her family was especially musical, but there was something operatic about her Ukrainian grandfather, a confident, eccentric character who would break into song regularly while walking down the street.
She moved to London to attend the Guildhall School of Music and Drama without having ever seen an opera. (Verdi’s “Falstaff,” her first, was a fun introduction. “Then I saw ‘Capriccio,’” she said with a laugh. “I still can’t get into it.”) In just her second year of college, Romaniw represented Wales in the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition, next to singers with contracts at La Scala, the Bolshoi Theater and the Metropolitan Opera.
“What I had was fearlessness,” she said. “And I was very, very gullible.”
Romaniw was surprised, then, when she felt fear. While in Houston, on the Young Artist program there, sudden lucidity onstage led to major performance anxiety, she said.
“You can put yourself in some really crippling positions where you inhibit yourself, because you’re too obsessed with wanting everything to be perfect,” she said. This anxiety, added to the feeling of “too many cooks” involved with her technique, had her returning to Britain feeling like “a nervous wreck.” It took six months to get psychologically ready to take any singing advice again.
Romaniw has been an ambassador for the charity Help Musicians for the past five years, and is happy to speak about topics like stage fright, weight changes and mental health issues, which previous generations of opera stars might have shied away from. “Selfishly, I used to quite enjoy it if I saw someone of quite high status making mistakes,” she said. “I was like, ‘See, they’re human!’ I would have given anything for someone to say, ‘I sang Gilda at E.N.O. and I missed the top note.’”
In recent years, Romaniw’s voice has developed as her body has changed. When she was pregnant in 2023, she was singing Ariadne in Strauss’s “Ariadne auf Naxos” at Garsington Opera. Suddenly she felt her sound deepen. “It was really refreshing and surprising to sink into these long, big, broad lines,” she said. “My breath work got better, because I had that lower-down support that helped me feel like I could just soar over the orchestra.”
Soaring over an orchestra is necessary to sing a Wagner role, and it’s a perennial worry for performers who take on his operas. Romaniw’s sound is lighter than Davidsen’s, but at Covent Garden it traveled with clarity, across the register.
“With the whole Wagner thing, I’ve always known to be careful,” she said. In the future, she expects to take on two more lyric roles from his works: Elsa in “Lohengrin” and Eva in “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.” She doubts, though, that Brünnhilde will come any time soon.
“I’m probably on this Wagner bus now,” she said, even if she is determined to get off that bus at regular intervals. “There’s always time for Wagner.”
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