Organization

Bayreuther Festspiele

Conductor

Daniel Barenboim

Stage director

Harry Kupfer

Set designer

Hans Schavernoch

Costume designer

Reinhard Heinrich

Tenor

Siegfried Jerusalem

Siegfried

Graham Clark

Mime

Baritone

John Tomlinson

The Wanderer

Bass

Günter von Kannen

Alberich

Philip Kang

Fafner

Contralto

Birgitta Svendén

Erda

Soprano

Deborah Polaski

Brünnhilde

Anne Evans

Hilde Leidland

Voice of a Woodbird

Orchestra

Bayreuther Festspielorchester

Ġermaniż

Germany

After the death of Siegfried's mother Sieglinde, the blacksmith Mime raises the boy. The uncultivated lad, to whom Mime initially refuses to reveal anything about his origins, finally forges his father's broken sword back together. In a fight, he defeats the giant worm Fafner, gains the Nibelungen hoard and is shown the way to the Valkyrie rock by the little forest bird. Wanderer Wotan, who asked Erda's advice in vain about whether he could stop the course of fate with Siegfried, wants to hold the young hero back. But the fearless smashes the wanderer's spear and awakens Brünnhilde.

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 "critique 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 and which leads us directly into the depths of the human soul.

"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, 7/29/92)

"Harry Kupfer and the protagonists brought the story as close to the audience as an opera can ever do." (Münchner Merkur, July 29, 1992) "With admirable rigor of the means of expression in the ring, he creates an opportunity to present the fullness of the forms in an exemplary manner and to clarify the basic questions of the 20th century without blatant one-sidedness." (Stuttgarter News, 29.7.92)

"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, 29.7.92)

"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, 30.7.92)

"Kupfer overheard things from Wagner that he might not even have imagined." (Der Spiegel) "Copper frees us, if not all the time, then in striking scenes from our superego by entangling us in the story of the Ring of the Nibelung. The question of what this old myth still means today does not need to be asked in Bayreuth singer who lives from his art, and basically not a 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)

"Since the start in 1988, the detailed work on this ring has continued, 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)

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