The Twilight of the Gods by Wagner, Dg. 13 Nov. 2011, De (2011/2011), Dirigit per Sven-Eric Bechtolf, Director musical Christian Thielemann, Wiener Staatsoper, Vienna, Austria

“Wagner is the one with the video clip. That's where it started. He was the first to have his lights go out during the spectacle. He wanted people to look and be sucked in.” Christian Thielemann Richard Wagner's 15-hour tetralogy "The Ring of the Nibelung" is the outstanding musico-dramatic creation in the history of mankind in terms of content and scope. However, you should not be intimidated by this. "Wagner is not difficult," says Christian Thielemann and pleads for an unprejudiced approach. As one of the most important contemporary Wagner conductors, it was important to him to take part in the four-part television production "Richard Wagner - The World of the Ring", which aims to make the plot and background of the works accessible to as wide an audience as possible. This is based on content and musical introductions to the four “Ring” operas. While the journalist Elke Heidenreich contributes a brief synopsis, the pianist Stefan Mickisch, unique in his inimitable charming manner and his outstanding knowledge of Wagner's scores, provides deeper insights into the plot and structure of the works. Excerpts from rehearsal recordings with Christian Thielemann at the Vienna State Opera and from exemplary "Ring" productions from the recent past by Patrice Chéreau (1980), Harry Kupfer (1992) and La Fura dels Baus (2009) make the four operas of the "Ring" for can be experienced by the viewer in all its complexity. Last but not least, the Wagner experts Udo Bermbach, Dieter Borchmeyer, Laurence Dreyfus, Friedrich Dieckmann and Stephan Mösch, as high-ranking discussion partners, provide further, well-founded insights into the “Ring” cosmos. In a mixture of opera guide and documentary film, Wagner's "Ring" is an entertaining introduction for Wagner newcomers and at the same time has some surprising insights in store for connoisseurs. "The Ring is simply the greatest task that can fall to a conductor."