Word: nibelungen
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Since its first performance more than a century ago, Richard Wagner's four- evening cycle of mythological music drama, Der Ring des Nibelungen, has been regarded as the Mount Everest of music, a daunting work that remains the ultimate test of operatic mettle. Despite its imposing demands, the Ring has been scaled repeatedly in the past four years -- at Bayreuth, San Francisco and Seattle, among other places. Last week the Metropolitan Opera took up the challenge, opening its 103rd season with a production of Die Walkure, the first installment of a new Ring...
Ever since Richard Wagner first staged his Der Ring des Nibelungen at Bayreuth in 1876, producers, directors and set designers have been trying to figure out how best to present his sweeping 16-hour cycle. Wagner set the first production in timeless, mythic German prehistory. In his revolutionary postwar interpretation, the composer's grandson Wieland emphasized the influence of Greek drama on Wagner's aesthetics. French Director Patrice Chereau detected a 19th century Marxist dialectic at work with his controversial 1976 Bayreuth staging, while Set Designer Pet Halmen and Director Nicolas Joel used aspects of Kabuki drama in their recent...
Ever since the grandiose failure of Sir Peter Hall's staging of Der Ring des Nibelungen in Bayreuth two summers ago, Wagnerites have been anticipating the San Francisco Opera's new production of the epic four-evening cycle. For although it is common knowledge in the opera world that there are not enough voices of heroic Wagnerian caliber around these days, just put on a Ring and watch the paying customers line...
...Wagner opera festival. Inside a broiling, stifling Festspielhaus, an elegant first-night crowd shed its tuxedo jackets along with its customary solemn decorum as it watched, with growing disappointment, impatience and finally anger, a new production of Wagner's 16-hour, four-evening German myth, Der Ring des Nibelungen, by two British knights, Director Sir Peter Hall and Conductor Sir Georg Solti...
Peter Sellars may be indicted with a catalogue of crimes against Der Ring des Nibelungen, Wagner's Ring cycle--indeed, at times he treats it like a woman of the streets, to be used and then discarded at will. But he avoids one crime, the reverential acceptance of performance traditions as gospel. In remolding the Ring to suit his aims and resources, he has played a final trick on Wagner, one even the most wilfully manipulative directors of the past haven't managed--turning these leaden operas into light entertainment...