Die Walküre (The Valkyrie), WWV 86B, is the second of the four operas that form the cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung), by Richard Wagner. Die Walküre's best-known excerpt is the "Ride of the Valkyries".

Wagner took his tale from the Norse mythology told in the Volsunga Saga and the Poetic Edda.

It received its premiere at the National Theatre Munich on 26 June 1870 at the insistence of King Ludwig II of Bavaria. It premiered in Wagner's Bayreuth Festival as part of the complete cycle on 14 August 1876. The opera made its United States premiere at the Academy of Music in New York on 2 April 1877.

Although Die Walküre is the second of the Ring operas, it was the third in order of conception. Wagner worked backwards from planning an opera about Siegfried's death, then deciding he needed another opera to tell of Siegfried's youth, then deciding he needed to tell the tale of Siegfried's conception and of Brünnhilde's attempts to save Siegfried's parents, and finally deciding he also needed a prelude that told of the original theft of the Rheingold and creation of the ring.

Deborah Voigt (born August 4, 1960) is an American operatic soprano. Voigt regularly performs in opera houses and concert halls worldwide.

Debbie Joy Voigt was born to a religious Southern Baptist family in 1960 and raised in Wheeling, Illinois outside Chicago. She joined the choir at a Baptist church at the age of five and began learning the piano. Her mother sang and played the piano at church while her two younger brothers sang in rock music bands. She became interested in music from her experience at church. When she was 14, her family moved to Placentia, California, located in Orange County. It was traumatic to Voigt, then in her teens, to move to "Southern California, the land of endless sunshine and impossibly perfect bodies."

She attended El Dorado High School, where she was a member of the El Dorado Vocal Music program. She was also involved in the theatre program at El Dorado, where she starred in musicals including Fiddler on the Roof, The Music Man and Mame. In an interview, Voigt recalled the time in which she did not seriously consider becoming an opera singer and even did not know the existence of the Metropolitan Opera. Upon graduation in 1978,

Jonas Kaufmann (born 10 July 1969) is a German operatic tenor. Although he has sung a variety of leading roles including both the Mozart and Wagner repertoire, he is particularly known for his performances in spinto roles such as Don José in Carmen, Cavaradossi in Tosca, Maurizio in Adriana Lecouvreur, and the title role in Don Carlos.

Kaufmann was born in Munich. His father worked for an insurance company, and his mother was a kindergarten teacher. He had one older sister. He started studying piano when he was eight, and he sang in his elementary school choir. Although he studied for math entrance exams, in the summer of 1989 he began his vocal training at the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich. While studying, he sang some small roles at the Bavarian State Opera. He graduated from school in 1994.

In 1995, after a vocal crisis, Kaufmann received help from American baritone Michael Rhodes who taught him a "new way of singing" and how to become "more relaxed in my voice and in myself." In Kaufmann's book Meinen die wirklich mich? he said, "To find a Michael Rhodes that can really help you and bring you to success is really a great stroke of luck."

Bryn Terfel Jones CBE (Welsh pronunciation: [ˈbrɨn ˈtɛrvɛl]; born 9 November 1965) is a Welsh bass-baritone opera and concert singer. Terfel was initially associated with the roles of Mozart, particularly Figaro and Leporello, but has subsequently shifted his attention to heavier roles, especially those by Wagner.

Bryn Terfel Jones was born in Pant Glas, North Wales, the son of a farmer. His first language is Welsh. He knew of another Welsh baritone named Bryn Jones, so chose Bryn Terfel as his professional name. He had an interest in and talent for music from a very young age. A family friend taught him how to sing, starting with traditional Welsh songs. After winning numerous competitions for his singing, he moved to London in 1984 and entered the Guildhall School of Music and Drama where he studied under Rudolf Piernay. (He has recorded that he initially applied to the music college in Cardiff but when the reply was addressed to ‘Miss Terfel’ he was so annoyed a Welsh College did not know Bryn was a man's name that he switched to London.) He graduated in 1989, winning both the Kathleen Ferrier Memorial Award and the Gold Medal. The same year he came second behind Dmitri Hvorostovsky in the Cardiff BBC Singer of the World Competition, but won the Lieder Prize.

James Lawrence Levine ( /lɨˈvaɪn/; born June 23, 1943) is an American conductor and pianist. He is currently on hiatus from his work as Music Director of the Metropolitan Opera, a situation necessitated by health problems and not due to end before the fall of 2013; the hiatus began in May 2011.

Levine's first performance conducting the Metropolitan Opera was on June 5, 1971, and, as of June 2011, he had conducted 2,442 Met performances, a record. The conductor has held music director positions with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Munich Philharmonic. In 1997, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts.

Levine was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, to a musical family: his maternal grandfather was a cantor in a synagogue, his father was a violinist who led a dance band, and his mother was an actress. He began to play the piano as a small child. At the age of 10, he made his concert debut as soloist in Felix Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto No. 2 at a youth concert of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.