by A complete staging of Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen – the Ring Cycle – is a big deal anywhere: a running time of 15 hours, divided into four separate shows.
But getting an international drawcard like this is especially important to Brisbane, and the city is getting a pairing: a three-week series featuring cutting-edge production design, billed by Opera Australia as the world’s first Ring Cycle. – digital backgrounds and scenery.
The production – which began the first of three full cycles last weekend – includes 834 LED screens and 1.4TB of video content, some of which is triggered by thousands of sensors on the performers’ costumes; The sets, staging, costumes and technology took 27 semi-trailer loads to get into town.
It’s telling that this is a big Ring Cycle for a show often compared to human feats of strength and endurance: the opera is the Olympics or Everest or, more simply, a marathon. And in the western performance, there is no greater challenge for performers: the shortest of the four parts is two hours and 35 minutes and the longest just under five hours. The singers are a special breed, who can be heard over huge orchestras for long stretches without tiring; with 2,000 pages of music to get through, the musicians also need stamina.
You could argue that the audience has a very hard job sitting in one spot to watch without distraction. That’s an achievement usually left to the so-called “Ring Nuts”: completists who travel to productions around the world. According to Opera Australia, only a third of the audience for this production will be from Brisbane, with 9% coming from overseas – some as far away as the US and Europe.
And as someone who usually crams in for more than three hours, my task was daunting: sit through all four final rehearsals of the entire series, and watch more than 15 hours of live opera in six days
But with tickets for each segment costing $165-625, it was also a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: the first full-stage Ring Cycle to come to my hometown in its 147-year history. (It’s never been done in Sydney either; the 83 musicians can’t join the Opera House orchestra pit.)
The production is directed and designed by Chen Shi-Zheng, who has a background in cinema, and whose digital staging is more than a gimmick. It intends to address the challenge of an increasingly apathetic audience; to attract and sustain their interest, and to create a work that is universal in scope thematically – and literally.
It’s immersive from the start, with digital displays spanning the width and height of the stage. Created by content designer Leigh Sachwitz and flora&faunavisions, images of nature – including the sun, moon, eclipse and elementals – add to the action in a world we all share, and add a layer of existential thought. with them; in the prologue, Das Rheingold, we are submerged in a glorious green wall of water, and dancing northern lights and starry clouds draw us into the heavenly realm of the gods.
And so with the plot. Drawn from Norse and Germanic mythology, the Series of the Rings features gods, mortals, giants, dwarves and nymphs, and follows the quest for a ring with the power to rule the world, which is stolen – and cursed. This story plays out against a multi-generational saga that largely revolves around the lord of the gods, Wotan, the husband of the goddess of marriage, Fricka, but who fathers children with two others: the goddess of the Earth, Erda (the nine Valkyries, led his favorite, Brunnhilde), and a dead man (twins Siegmund and Sieglinde).
You don’t need to be a nerd to appreciate the descriptive clarity of Wagner’s leitmotifs and innovative orchestration, including here new instruments and even an anvil tuned to the Nibelung. The elite singers make extensive use of their voices; International artists Lise Lindstrom and Stefan Vinke are rightly celebrated for their signature roles as Brunnhilde and Siegfried, but they don’t overwhelm the Australian talent. Many people are curious to see new star Anna-Louise Cole transition from Sieglinde to Brunnhilde in the final cycle, which will take place on Friday 13 December.
Inspired set pieces provide pure theatrical spectacle. In part two, Die Walküre (The Valkyrie, who leads slain warriors to Wotan’s Valhalla), Brunnhilde’s eight sisters on a steel phoenix jet, which descends from the sky to Ride of the Valkyries, deserves applause. Another showpiece is the giant metal dragon, with a truly flaming backbone.
Choreographed by Akasia Ruth Inchaustegui, aerial sequences offer the seductive lure of Rhinemaidens diving, twisting and wandering beneath the surface of the river in Das Rheingold; and interactive digital tracking of a floating woodland bird in the third, Siegfried. Played out against a backdrop of exquisite greens and eerie blues depicting a night forest, it was my favorite scene of sheer beauty.
Anita Yavich’s imaginative costumes provide an unusual framework for the characters, such as the beetle-like Nibelung dwellers Alberich (Warwick Fyfe) and Mim (Andreas Conrad), and the final installment’s destiny-weaving Norns, whose hair skirts look like beehives coiled. from the inside.
Exciting comedy and physical comedy are interspersed among the drama. Cole and Rosario La Spina make sympathetic characters of the guilty twins, Sieglinde and Siegmund; and as her son Siegfried, German tenor Vinke brings youthful charisma and humor to an imperfect hero. Perhaps the biggest surprise is the strength and complexity of the female protagonists Fricka (Deborah Humble) and Brunnhilde (Lindstrom).
After the sweet 155 minutes of Das Rheingold, the following three shows are much longer, but each has two welcome (and necessary) intermissions. And yet over 15 hours into the show, my caution was rarely mentioned; the scale of the production and its sensory impact keep it strong, and the performances and pacing maintain momentum. As the Series drew to an apocalyptic conclusion in Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods), I felt exhilarated – not only by Brunnhilde’s courage and wisdom in doing what the power-hungry men could not, but by the endorphin rush when I reached the finish line. . (I even went back for the first two premieres, bringing my cumulative time watching The Ring to nearly 22 hours over nine days.)
All four shows are a significant investment that only a few people can see – but with two cycles left over two weeks, viewers can still test the water with one ticket first. For those wary of opera as a genre, you might instead see this as the musical drama Wagner intended: you’ll find parallels with epics like The Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones and Vikings, and maybe you will – as I did. – fell under his spell.
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Wagner’s Ring Cycle is being performed at the Queensland Performing Arts Center until December, with the second series starting on December 8 and the third series starting on December 15
