The full staging of Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen (colloquially the Ring Cycle) is a big event anywhere: 15 hours of running time divided into four separate performances.
But it’s particularly important for Brisbane to get an international draw card like this, and it’s here that the city gets a coup: a three-week series with cutting-edge production design, billed by Opera Australia as the world’s first full-fledged Ring Cycle. -digital backgrounds and landscapes.
The production, which started last weekend as the first of three full cycles, consists of 834 LED screens and 1.4 TB of video content; some of these are triggered by thousands of sensors on the performers’ costumes; It took 27 semi-trailer loads for sets, staging, costumes and technology to reach the city.
That this is a major Ring Loop says something for a spectacle often compared to human strength and endurance: the Olympics, or the Everest of opera, or, more simply, a marathon. There is no greater challenge for performers in Western performance: The shortest of the four movements is two hours and 35 minutes, and the longest is just under five hours. Singers are a special breed who can listen to large orchestras for long periods of time without tiring; With 2000 pages of music, musicians need stamina too.
You could argue that viewers also have a difficult job getting them to sit in one spot to watch without distraction. This is a skill usually left to “Ring geeks” – completists who travel to productions around the world. According to Opera Australia, only a third of this production’s audience will be from Brisbane, with 9% coming from overseas, some from as far away as the US and Europe.
And as someone who usually resists anything longer than three hours, my task was daunting: to attend all four of the final dress rehearsals of the full suite and watch more than 15 hours of live opera in six days.
But with tickets priced at $165-$625 per piece, it was also a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: the first fully staged Ring Cycle to come to my hometown in its 147-year history. (It’s never been done in Sydney either; 83 musicians wouldn’t fit in the Opera House’s orchestra pit.)
The production is directed and designed by Chen Shi-Zheng, who has a background in cinema and whose digital staging is much more than a gimmick. Its aim is to overcome the challenges faced by increasingly attention-deficit audiences; to capture and sustain their interest and to create a work of thematically – and literally – universal scope.
It’s immersive from the start, with digital screens spanning the width and height of the stage. Nature imagery, including the sun, moon, eclipses, and elemental, created by content designer Leigh Sachwitz and flora and fauna images, situates the action in a world we all share and adds a layer of existential contemplation; In the prologue, Das Rheingold, we are submerged in a magnificent wall of green water; dancing northern lights and nebulae draw us into the celestial realm of the gods.
And so on to the plot. Drawn from Norse and Germanic mythology, the Ring Cycle features gods, mortals, giants, dwarves and water maidens and follows the pursuit of a stolen and later cursed ring that grants the power to rule the world. This story is played out against multi-generational epics that largely revolve around Wotan, lord of the gods, who is the husband of Fricka, the goddess of marriage, but fathers children with two other people: the Earth goddess Erda (the nine Valkyries led by him). favorite Brunnhilde) and a mortal (twins Siegmund and Sieglinde).
You don’t have to be an enthusiast to appreciate the defining clarity of Wagner’s leitmotifs and the innovative orchestration, which here includes new instruments and even anvils set for the Nibelung. Distinguished singers use their voices admirably; International performers Lise Lindstrom and Stefan Vinke are rightly praised for their signature roles as Brunnhilde and Siegfried, but they don’t overshadow Australian talent. Many are wondering about rising star Anna-Louise Cole’s transition from Sieglinde to Brunnhilde in the latest cycle, which premieres on Friday, December 13.
Inspiring set pieces deliver pure theatrical spectacle. In the second episode, the arrival of Brunnhilde’s eight sisters descending from the sky in a steel phoenix jet into the Ride of the Valkyrie, Die Walküre (the Valkyrie who guides the slain warriors to Wotan’s Valhalla), deserves applause. Another show-stopper is the huge metal dragon whose spine is made of real flames.
Aerial scenes choreographed by Akasia Ruth Inchaustegui present the mesmerizing illusion of the Rhine Girls diving, spinning and somersaulting beneath the river surface in Das Rheingold; and an interactive digital tracking of a bird flying through a forest in the third episode, Siegfried. The mesmerizing beauty of the scene, performed against a delightful backdrop of opaque greens and blues that illuminate the forest at night, made it my favorite.
Anita Yavich’s imaginative costumes provide a welcome framework for characters like the insect-like Nibelung dwarves Alberich (Warwick Fyfe) and Mime (Andreas Conrad), as do the fate-weaving Norns in the final episode, whose frizzy hair skirts resemble flaming beehives. through.
There are deliciously sarcastic jokes and physical comedy scattered among the drama. Cole and Rosario La Spina play the sympathetic characters of incestuous twins Sieglinde and Siegmund; German tenor Vinke brings youthful charisma and humor to a flawed hero as their son Siegfried. Perhaps the biggest surprise is the strength and complexity of the heroines, Fricka (Deborah Humble) and Brunnhilde (Lindstrom).
After Das Rheingold’s gentle 155 minutes, the next three shows are much longer, but each has two welcome (and necessary) intervals. Yet my alertness rarely waned during the 15 hours of the show; The scale and sensory impact of the production keep it engaging, and the performances and pacing keep the momentum going. As the cycle came to an apocalyptic conclusion in Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods), I felt exhilarated not only by Brunnhilde’s courage and wisdom to do what power-hungry men could not, but also by the endorphin hit of reaching the finish line. . (I even returned for the first two premieres, which gave me up to about 22 hours of watching Ring Cycle over nine days in total.)
Seeing all four shows is a significant investment that only a few people can afford; But with two shows remaining for two weeks, viewers can still test the waters first with a single ticket. Those wary of opera as a genre may 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 you may find yourself – as I did. – fall under its spell.
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Wagner’s Ring Cycle will be on display at the Queensland Performing Arts Center until December; The second cycle will start on December 8th and the third cycle will start on December 15th.