AROUND TOWN/MUSIC: Ten things you may not know about Wagner's "Ring"

By Robert D. Thomas
Music Critic
Pasadena Star-News/San Gabriel Valley Tribune/Whittier Daily News
This article was first published today in the above papers.

Los Angeles Opera’s first production of Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen opens Sat., May 29 with three complete cycles of Wagner’s mammoth work scheduled. Here are 10 things you may not know about this Ring:

1. LA Opera is just the fifth United States opera company to produce the complete Ring cycle (the others are New York’s Metropolitan, San Francisco, Seattle and Lyric Opera of Chicago).

2. When Wagner first mounted his Ring cycle in 1876, he didn’t call the four segments “operas.” Instead, he described them as “music dramas” — a prologue and three “days.” The 1876 Ring was produced in Bayreuth, a small town in northern Bavaria that Wagner chose, in part, so that people would make a “pilgrimage” to see his operas, as opposed to viewing them amid the bustle of everyday life. Thousands still come every year — Bayreuth is Mecca for Wagner lovers.

3. Wagner — who had an amazing ability to raise money — got King Ludwig II of Bavaria to fund construction of the Bayreuth Festpielhaus where the first complete Ring cycle was presented. Wagner had an even greater penchant for spending money, so the house was never completed.

4. Wagner wrote both the texts and the music for all four music dramas. The words came first — in reverse order — from 1848 to 1852, beginning with what Wagner originally called Siegfried’s Tod (Siegfried’s Death), followed by Der Junge Siegfried, Die Walküre and Das Rheingold. The music followed immediately, beginning with Rheingold in 1853 and continuing through Act II of Siegfried in 1857 when Wagner had to lay the Ring aside, in part, to make money. During the next eight years, he wrote Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. Wagner resumed writing Siegfried in 1865 and completed Götterdämerung in time for the 1876 Ring premiere.

5. Unlike most operas, there are no recitatives in the Ring and the only thing approximating an aria is Winterstürme in Die Walküre. Moreover, each prelude leads directly into its act. Wagner believed in “endless music” for his operas.

6. LA Opera’s Ring is a primary reason why James Conlon agreed to become the company’s music director beginning with the 2006-2007 season. This will be Conlon’s first complete cycle, although he has conducted all four music dramas both here in and in Germany.

7. This is also the first Ring for 76-year-old Achim Freyer, the noted German director, set designer and painter. His previous work for LAO was a controversial staged version of Bach’s Mass in B Minor and an acclaimed mounting of Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust. Freyer’s Ring design has also created much controversy, not unusual for a Ring production since Weiland Wagner (the composer’s grandson) shocked the purists in 1951 with his revolutionary staging in Bayreuth.

8. Although this is the first Ring cycle in Los Angeles, it’s not the first in Southern California. In 2006, the Mariinsky Theatre’s Kirov Opera brought a Ring from St. Petersburg, Russia, to the Orange County Performing Arts Center. Earlier that year, Long Beach Opera also produced a condensed version of the Ring over two days.

9. LA Opera’s Ring encompasses nearly 18 hours, not counting Conlon’s erudite pre-opera lectures or travel time to and from the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Although the Bayreuth cycle is traditionally four operas in six days, the LAO Ring is spread out over nine days. Alternatively you can see the four operas on Saturdays and Sundays or you can elect to see just one, two, or three of the productions.

10. This Ring is a bargain. Although ticket prices range between $50 and $275, you don’t have to pay airfare or hotel bills to attend the LAO Ring, thus saving you thousands of dollars.

Further information: www.laoperaring.com/. You can get more details in an ongoing eight-part series on my Blog HERE.

__

(c) Copyright 2010, Robert D. Thomas. All rights reserved. Portions may be quoted with attribution.