Valkyries at Glastonbury

The Glastonbury Festival is not where you would generally expect to find fans of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, but the UK rock fest is giving Brunhilde a chance anyway. This June, the English National Opera will travel to Glastonbury with 91 musicians and 11 soloists to perform the third act of Wagner’s “The Valkyries” before an audience of better than 100,000 fans, most of whom likely do not fit the standard profile of the opera enthusiast. For the ENO, it’s a chance to reach out to an untapped (and young) audience; for the festival, it’s just one more way to maintain its reputation as quirky and daring.