We left at the interval...

ONP Bastille, Paris, Tuesday February 11 2025 Conductor: Pablo Heras-Casado. Production: Calixto Bieito. Sets: Rebecca Ringst. Costumes: Ingo Krügler. Lighting: Michael Bauer. Video: Sarah Derendinger. Wotan: Iain Paterson. Donner: Florent Mbia. Froh: Matthew Cairns. Loge: Simon O'Neill. Fasolt: Kwangchul Youn. Fafner: Mika Kares. Alberich: Brian Mulligan. Mime: Gerhard Siegel. Fricka: Eve-Maud Hubeaux. Freia: Eliza Boom. Erda: Marie-Nicole Lemieux. Woglinde: Margarita Polonskaya. Wellgunde: Isabel Signoret. Flosshilde: Katharina Magiera. Orchestra of the Opéra National de Paris. Photos: Herwig Prammer/ONP These are head-spinning times for Ring cycles, at least as far as I’m concerned. The Paris Opera originally scheduled Bieito’s five years ago. Covid intervened, and it was postponed. In the meantime, at the end of 2023, Brussels launched its own cycle, directed by Romeo Castellucci. His Rheingold and Walküre were among the most enthralling productions I’ve ever seen of anythin...

La Monnaie, Brussels, Sunday November 5 2023 Conductor: Alain Altinoglu. Production, sets, costumes and lighting: Romeo Castellucci, with Paola Villani (sets), Clara Strasser (costumes), Benedikt Zehm (lighting). Choreography: Cindy Van Acker. Wotan: Gábor Bretz. Donner: Andrew Foster-Williams. Froh: Julian Hubbard. Loge: Nicky Spence. Fricka: Marie-Nicole Lemieux. Freia: Annett Fritsch. Erda: Nora Gubisch. Alberich: Scott Hendricks. Mime: Peter Hoare. Fasolt: Ante Jerkunica. Fafner: Wilhelm Schwinghammer. Woglinde: Eleonore Marguerre. Wellgunde: Jelena Kordić. Flosshilde: Christel Loetzsch. La Monnaie Symphony Orchestra. Photos: Monika Rittershaus An artist I know well has nearly always worked on long-term projects, in some cases spanning ten years or more, with exhibitions marking various stages along the way as the projects - and the artist's life - progress. Each 'iteration' both develops and transforms what's gone before. It contains external references - for exam...

Teatro alla Scala, Milan, Saturday May 29, 2010 Conductor: Daniel Barenboim. Production: Guy Cassiers. Sets: Guy Cassiers and Enrico Bagnoli. Costumes: Tim Van Steenbergen. Lighting: Enrico Bagnoli. Videos: Arjen Klerkx and Kurt d'Haeseleer. Coreography: Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. Wotan: René Pape. Donner: Jan Buchwald. Froh: Marco Jentzsch. Loge: Stephan Rügamer. Alberich: Johannes Martin Kränzle. Mime: Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke. Fasolt: Tigran Martirossian. Fafner: Timo Riihonen. Fricka: Doris Soffel. Freia: Anna Samuil. Erda: Anna Larsson. Woglinde: Aga Mikolaj. Wellgunde: Maria Gortsevskaya. Flosshilde: Marina Prudenskaya. Orchestra and Chorus of the Teatro alla Scala, Milan. An excellent (supposedly working) week in Italy, which had already taken in Maria Stuarda in Palermo, ended on the (very) high point - again thanks to my extraordinarily hospitable colleagues there – of Das Rheingold at La Scala, conducted by Barenboim. Well, not quite “ended,” as once more there was a del...

ONP Bastille, Wednesday March 10 2010 Conductor: Philippe Jordan. Production: Günter Krämer. Sets: Jürgen Bäckmann. Costumes: Falk Bauer. Lighting: Diego Leetz. Wotan: Falk Struckmann. Donner: Samuel Youn. Froh: Marcel Reijans: Froh. Loge: Kim Begley. Alberich: Peter Sidhom. Mime: Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke. Fasolt: Iain Paterson. Fafner: Günther Groissböck. Fricka: Sophie Koch. Freia: Ann Petersen. Erda: Qiu Lin Zhang. Woglinde: Caroline Stein. Wellgunde: Daniela Sindram. Flosshilde: Nicole Piccolomini. Orchestra of the Opéra National de Paris. It doesn’t take long to sink in. You’re sitting there in the dark with the orchestra scraping away, singers tootling about on stage in a smudge of lights and colours and movements, your neighbours are coughing and sneezing and rooting around for tissues or sweets, and it dawns on you: I’m bored. So it was with Das Rheingold on Wednesday night. Now I know it’s a matter of taste and some people hated Bob Wilson’s Ring . But for me, at the ...

Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris, November 1 2005 Conductor: Christoph Eschenbach. Production, sets and lighting: Robert Wilson. Wotan: Jukka Rasilainen. Donner: Laurent Alvaro. Froh: Endrik Wottrich. Loge: Arnold Bezuyen (replacing David Kuebler). Alberich: Sergei Leiferkus. Mime: Volker Vogel. Fasolt: Franz-Josef Selig. Fafner: Günther Groissböck. Fricka: Mihoko Fujimura. Freia: Camilla Nylund. Erda: Qiu Lin Zhang. Woglinde: Kirsten Blaise. Wellgunde: Daniela Denschlag. Flosshilde: Annette Jahns. Orchestre de Paris. Perhaps the final performance, on November 1, of the current run of Das Rheingold illustrates the fact that, though we do it all the time, you can’t judge a production from a single evening. I’d read and heard all kinds of worrying things about it: “singing zombies” in a stultifyingly static production, devoid of all humour, with shaky effects where any Wilson show needs to be a precision machine; a catastrophic orchestra, too light, too heavy and too slow; singers miscast, wi...