Organization

Bayreuther Festspiele

Conductor

Daniel Barenboim

Stage director

Harry Kupfer

Set designer

Hans Schavernoch

Costume designer

Reinhard Heinrich

Singer

Tenor

Siegfried Jerusalem

Siegfried

Baritone

Bodo Brinkmann

Gunther

Günter von Kannen

Alberich

Bass

Philip Kang

Hagen

Soprano

Anne Evans

Brünnhilde

Deborah Polaski

Eva-Maria Bundschuh

Gutrune

Mezzo-soprano

Waltraud Meier

Waltraute

Contralto

Birgitta Svendén

First Norn

Linda Finnie

Second Norn

Uta Priew

Third Norn

Hilde Leidland

Woglinde

Annette Küttenbaum

Wellgunde

Jane Turner

Flosshilde

Orchestra

Bayreuther Festspielorchester

German

Götterdämmerung -  (The Twilight of the Gods)

Germany

The Norns weave the rope of world events, but it snaps and they no longer know what will happen. Siegfried says goodbye to Brünnhilde: He is drawn to new deeds. He leaves the ring as a token of love. At the court of the Gibichungen, the siblings Gunther and Gutrune, together with their half-brother Hagen, Alberich's son, have drawn up a plan: Gutrune is to become Siegfried's wife and Gunther to marry Brünnhilde. When Siegfried shows up at their house, they make him docile with a forgetting potion. As a blood brother, he then wants to get Gunther's Brünnhilde off the rock for him. Meanwhile, Waltraute has urged her sister to atone for the crime and return the ring to the Rhinemaidens. But Brünnhilde defends her love pledge. Transformed into Gunther's form by the Tarnhelm, Siegfried invades Brünnhilde and robs her of the ring. She must become Gunther's wife. At Gibichungenhof she meets Siegfried, who does not recognize her. But the ring on his finger proves deceit and treason. She swears revenge with Gunther and Hagen: Siegfried shall die. Hagen kills him treacherously while hunting. But first he hands him a memory potion. So Siegfried dies knowing; his last greeting goes to Brünnhilde. During the dispute over Siegfried's ring, Hagen also kills Gunther. But then Brünnhilde appears. She ignites the world conflagration and throws the ring down to the Rhinemaidens. Hagen kills him treacherously while hunting. But first he hands him a memory potion. So Siegfried dies knowing; his last greeting goes to Brünnhilde. During the dispute over Siegfried's ring, Hagen also kills Gunther. But then Brünnhilde appears. She ignites the world conflagration and throws the ring down to the Rhinemaidens. Hagen kills him treacherously while hunting. But first he hands him a memory potion. So Siegfried dies knowing; his last greeting goes to Brünnhilde. During the dispute over Siegfried's ring, Hagen also kills Gunther. But then Brünnhilde appears. She ignites the world conflagration and throws the ring down to the Rhinemaidens.

Conductor Daniel Barenboim, director Harry Kupfer, set designer Hans Schavernoch and costume designer Reinhard Heinrich came to Bayreuth in 1988 to realize their vision of Wagner's "Ring". They consistently turned away from the time the work was created and conceived their staging as "a critique of human history, of the entire cultural development, at the end of which we are heavily involved" (Kupfer). The Kupfer team set Wagner's "criticism of man's rage for destruction, of lovelessness and alienation" (Kupfer), which is rooted in Germanic mythology, in a present that harbors a past and a future at the same time. The space for this pre-time, simultaneity and post-time is the "road of history" on which power struggles and love troubles occur,

"Under Barenboim, the music is exquisite. Especially the narrative power of Rheingold, the descriptions of the above- and below-ground events run off with great musical imagery in a fascinating variety of colors... All roles are again cast with sharp characters." (Die Welt)

"Harry Kupfer and the protagonists brought the story as close to the audience as an opera can ever do." (Münchner Merkur)
"With admirable rigor of the means of expression in the ring, he creates an opportunity to present the abundance of forms in an exemplary manner and to clarify the basic questions of the 20th century without blatant one-sidedness." (Stuttgarter News)
"You can already feel it: saying goodbye will be a difficult one. Harry Kupfer's production of Richard Wagner's Ring des Nibelungen has by no means lost any of its expressiveness over the years... The meeting of past, present and future is more than a vision. After Rheingold und Walküre it is beyond doubt that Harry Kupfer has presented what is perhaps the most important interpretation of the mammoth drama after Patrice Chéreau." (West German General)

"Harry Kupfer's production of the Ring, intellectually well-founded, comedy-inspired, psychologically motivated, became the third important interpretation in Neubayreuth after Wieland Wagner and Patrice Chéreau. These three interpretations alone reveal the variety of scenic possibilities; they open up the widest spectrum in the stylistic pluralism of the today's music theater..." (Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger)
"Kupfer overheard things from Wagner that he perhaps could not even have imagined." (The mirror)

"Copper liberates us, if not all the time, then in striking scenes from our superego by enmeshing us in the story of the Ring of the Nibelung. No singer in Bayreuth needs to ask what this old myth still means today who lives his art, and basically no listener either." (FAZ)

"Bayreuth can boast, much to the fury of its ancient Wagnerians, an apocalyptic Ring interpretation for the ecologically conscious late eighties: Twilight of technology instead of Twilight of the Gods." (Profile, Vienna)
"The detailed work on this ring has been going on since the start in 1988, and it has served in the Bayreuth workshop to bring the quality of the performance to the limits of what is achievable." (Der Tagesspiegel, Berlin)

Götterdämmerung Wagner,Richard

Public

The Twilight of the Gods

Approved

Production booklet

Further reading