Der Ring des Nibelungen at the Bayreuth Festival - all the productions
Richard Wagner's main work is the tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen. Wagner wrote the libretto and music between 1848 and 1874. The four operas that constitute the Ring cycle are: Das Rheingold (The Rhine Gold), Die Walküre (The Valkyrie), Siegfried and Götterdämmerung (The Twilight of the Gods).
1876 (3 cycles) - Richard Wagner
Stage director
Richard Wagner
Conductor
Hans Richter
Josephine Scheffsky as Siegline in Die Walküre 1876.
1896-1914 (29 cycles) - Cosima Wagner
Stage director
Cosima Wagner (co-director from 1901: Siegfried Wagner)
Conductors
Felix Mottl (1896)
Hans Richter (1896, 1897, 1901, 1902, 1904, 1906, 1908)
Siegfried Wagner (1896, 1897, 1899, 1901, 1902, 1906)
Franz Beidler (1904)
Michael Balling (1909, 1911, 1912, 1914)
1924-1931 (14 cycles) - Siegfried Wagner
Stage director
Conductor
Michael Balling (1924, 1925)
Franz von Hoesslin (1927, 1928)
Siegfried Wagner (1928)
Karl Elmendorff (1930, 1931)
1933-1942 (18 cycles) - Heinz Tietjen
Stage director
Heinz Tietjen
Conductors
Karl Elmendorff (1933, 1934, 1942)
Heinz Tietjen (1934, 1936, 1938, 1939, 1941)
Wilhelm Furtwängler (1936, 1937)
Franz von Hoesslin (1940)
This was the first Ring not to be directed by a Wagner family member.
1951-1958 (16 cycles) - Wieland Wagner
Stage director
Conductors
Herbert von Karajan (1951)
Hans Knappertsbusch (1951, 1956, 1957, 1958)
Joseph Keilberth (1952, 1953, 1954, 1955, 1956)
Clemens Krauss (1953)
Das Rheingold (Premiere 31 July 1951): Hans Knappertsbusch
Die Walküre (Premiere 1 August 1951): Hans Knappertsbusch
Siegfried (Premiere 2 August 1951): Hans Knappertsbusch
Götterdämmerung (Premiere 4 August 1951): Hans Knappertsbusch
1960-1964 (11 cycles) - Wolfgang Wagner
Stage director
Conductors
Rudolf Kempe (1960, 1961, 1962, 1963)
Berislav Klobucar (1964)
Principal singers
Hermann Uhde/Theo Adam / Jerôme Hines / Otto Wiener / Hans Hotter (Wotan), Gerhard Stolze (Loge), Otakar Kraus (Alberich), Jutta Meyfarth (Sieglinde), Gottlob Frick (Hunding and Hagen), Birgit Nilsson / Astrid Varnay (Brünnhilde), Hans Hopf (Siegfried), Herold Kraus / Erich Klaus (Mime)
Before his Bayreuth debut as Ring director, Wolfgang Wagner had already directed the Ring at La Fenice in Venice. The basic visual elements were a concave and a convex disc, symbolizing the world of the gods and the Nibelungs. During the final bars of Götterdämmerung the destroyed disc was restored. Wolfgang Wagner wanted to have two naked people, but this was too bold for its time, according to Wolfgang. (See Wolfgang Wagner: Lebens-Akte, p. 208-209)
For this Ring Wolfgang used a large concave disc – in German the Scheibe – which was soon nicknamed the saucer. But it did not remain a platform. It was also symbolic of the story, starting as the placid bed of a pool in the Rhine, it was later split and segments of it set at different angles. Each scene used the Scheibe in a different form, often roofed by a companion disc in various broken sections. Strife and suffering mark the development of the saga, and this design depicted the tumult of passions and events in bold, jagged shapes, until at the very end when the Rhinemaidens have regained their golden talisman, when all passion is spent and peace heals the passing of gods and men, the great disc sank back into its first simplicity. Bare and smooth it lay, under a silvery blue light. Of all the Rings I have seen in many different operahouses this was by far the fines ending of Götterdämmerung.
Penelope Turing: New Bayreuth (p. 63)
1965-1969 (12 cycles) - Wieland Wagner
Stage director
Wieland Wagner
Conductors
Karl Böhm (1965, 66, 67)
Otmar Suitner (1966, 67)
Lorin Maazel(1968, 69)
Das Rheingold (Premiere: 25 July 1965): Karl Böhm
Die Walküre (Premiere: 26 July 1965): Karl Böhm
Siegfried (Premiere: 28 July 1965): Karl Böhm
Götterdämmerung (Premiere: 31 July 1965): Karl Böhm
Principal singers
Theo Adam, Wolfgang Windgassen, Gustav Neidlinger, Erwin Wohlfahrt, Martti Talvela, Gerd Nienstedt, Gerhard Stolze, Zoltán Kelemen, Birgit Nilsson, James King, Leonie Rysanek, Josef Greindl, Thomas Stewart, Martha Mödl
"I was bowled over. It was the year after Wieland Wagner [grandson of the composer, and the festival's radical postwar artistic director] had died; to be able to see his productions was a total knock-out. These bare stagings, where everything was done with lighting. The light changed with the music, and the shadows and patterns seemed as archetypal as the music itself. Nobody had done that on the stage before. I thought it was extraordinary and wonderful."
Patrick Carnegy to The Guardian on the release of his book Wagner and the Art of the Theatre
1970-1975 (16 cycles) - Wolfgang Wagner
Stage director
Wolfgang Wagner
Conductor
Horst Stein (1970, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75)
Principal singers
Heinz Zednik (Mime), Thomas Stewart / Theo Adam / Donald McIntyre (Wotan), Hermin Esser (Loge), Gustav Neidlinger / Franz Mazura (Alberich), Marga Höfgen (Erda), Karl Ridderbusch (Fasolt), Kurt Moll (Fafner), Catarina Ligendza / Gwyneth Jones (Brünnhilde), Gwyneth Jones / Marita Napier (Sieglinde), Karl Ridderbusch (Hunding), Jean Cox (Siegfried), Franz Mazura (Gunther), Janis Martin / Eva Randová (Gutrune)
1976-1980 (16 cycles) - Patrice Chéreau
Stage director
Patrice Chéreau
Conductor
This was the second Ring not directed by a Wagner family member. The first one was Heinz Tietjen's production running 1933-1942.
Principal singers
Donald McIntyre, Gwyneth Jones, Jeannine Altmeyer, Manfred Jung, Heinz Zednik, Siegfried Jerusalem, Hermann Becht, Helmut Pampuch, Matti Salminen, Fritz Hübner, Hanna Schwarz, Peter Hofmann
Written about Patrice Chéreau's Ring
Although some of the costumes may today look unavoidably ”1970s” in theatrical taste, Chéreau’s wonderful production remains an indisputable reference for all later Rings, and even (as the author J L Borges might have said) for all earlier ones as well! Today I can see that Chéreau’s emotionally intelligent ”Personenregie” is even more important than his historical re-reading of the drama. In his humanization of the roles, he brings out psychological nuances, ambivalences, doubts and desires that are matched (and surpassed) only by the relational complexity of the musical score itself.
Boulez’s famous transparency in orchestral texture, his rhythmic precision, lighter tempos, and his preference for woodwinds over strings, all contribute to a Gallic clarity of interpretation, evoking a modernist understanding pointing back to early French wagnerism and to Baudelaire’s aesthetical writings on Wagner in the 1860s. Still, in his conducting, Boulez is less avant-garde, less distanced and more emotionally expressive than he used to be before his Bayreuth experience started in 1966.
This Ring comes out extremely well on DVD, not least due to its humour, and to Brian Large’s magnificent TV production with its frequent close-up filming.
Erling E. Guldbrandsen
For anyone who would accuse Boulez of being a ‘cold’ conductor, listen to Act One of Die Walküre, once again with an unforgettable – not least visually – Siegmund and Sieglinde from Peter Hofmann and Jeannine Altmeyer. This is some of the most passionate Wagner one will ever see and hear. Boulez’s phenomenal ear clarifies textures yet, like Karajan, he is perfectly willing to broaden the scale and to intensify the emotional level when required. There is a host of other memorable performances, not least Donald Macintyre’s Wotan and Gwyneth Jones’s Brünnhilde. Yet it is the epoch-making nature of the production, resulting initially in death-threats for Boulez and Chéreau, which truly makes this mandatory viewing. Chéreau’s Personenregie is more or less unrivalled. His connection of the drama to its nineteenth-century political and social context is never didactic and often, even now, quite revelatory. Joachim Herz may have done something not entirely dissimilar in Leipzig but now the rest of the world had the opportunity to witness a searing mythological, historical, and contemporary drama, which unfolds mesmerizingly from the opening mise-en-scène (designer: Richard Peduzzi) of a Rhenish hydroelectric dam. Wagner production was transformed forever.
Mark Berry
1983-1986 (12 cycles) - Peter Hall
Stage director
Peter Hall
Conductor
Georg Solti(1983)
Peter Schneider (1984, 85, 86)
Principal singers
Hildegard Behrens, Siegmund Nimsgern, Siegfried Jerusalem
1988-1992 (15 cycles) - Harry Kupfer
Waltraud Meier (Waltraute) and Anne Evans (Brünnhilde) in Götterdämmerung.
Stage director
Conductor
Principal singers
John Tomlinson, Anne Evans / Deborah Polaski, Siegfried Jerusalem, Graham Clark, Günter von Kannen, Matthias Hölle, Philip Kang, Poul Elming, Nadine Secunde
Waltraud Meier on Harry Kupfer's Ring production at Bayreuth
Denken Sie an Harry Kupfers grandiosen Bayreuther "Ring des Nibelungen". Bei diesen klugen und dabei emotional intensiven Bildern, bei denen stets ein Element des Gesamtkunstwerks ins andere greift, war ich ergriffen. Dagegen ist vieles heute nur noch banal, oberflächlich, läppisch und im Grunde moderner Kitsch. (Waltraud Meier ïnterviewed by Die Welt)
1994-1998 (15 cycles) - Alfred Kirchner
Stage director
Alfred Kirchner
Conductor
James Levine
2000-2004 (15 cycles) - Jürgen Flimm
Stage director
Jürgen Flimm
Conductor
Giuseppe Sinopoli (2000)
Adam Fischer (2001, 02, 03, 04)
2006–2010 - Tancred Dorst
Photo: Jörg Schulze
Stage director
Tankred Dorst
Conductor
Christian Thielemann
Principal singers
Albert Dohmen, Linda Watson, Kwangchul Youn, Eva-Maria Westbroek, Andrew Shore, Stephen Gould.
Sources
- Philippe Olivier: Der Ring des Nibelungen in Bayreuth von den Anfängen bis heute
- Wagners Werk und Wirkung
- Penelope Turing: New Bayreuth
- Bayreuther Festspiele Homepage
2013-
Stage director
Frank Castorf