It began with a scandal, became the object of heated discussions, turned into a sensational success and finally blossomed into a legendary, standard setting production: Pierre Boulez’ and Patrice Chéreau’s epoch-making “Ring” cycle in Bayreuth, the “Centennial Ring”. When the production was premiered in 1976, there were brawls in the venerable Festspielhaus, with the audience divided into one mob roaring in favor and one screaming against. The main reason for the protests was Chéreau, who set the work in the time in which it was written and focused on the all-too-human passions that motivate gods and men alike. The grimy industrial era with its robber barons and suffering masses supplied the ideological underpinnings of Chéreau’s concept. Musical conservatives felt betrayed and cheapened by this association. The tide began to turn in 1977. Certain features were altered and the production began to have a more homogeneous feel. Finally, in 1980, its last year, the Ring concluded with a 90-minute ovation and 110 curtain calls. By the time Philips released the complete recording of this production in 1992, its legendary status had already begun to take shape: “Patrice Chéreau and Pierre Boulez not only wrote a major new chapter in Wagner interpretation with their Ring, but also carried out a revolution that affected all of musical theater. Since then, no production of the Ring has been able to come near to the concept put forward by Chéreau and Boulez.” (FonoForum) Unitel’s production, the first complete recording on film of Wagner’s Ring, marked the beginning of Unitel’s exclusive association with the Bayreuth Festival.
Der Fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman)
Parsifal
In the words of Opern Welt, Sinopoli “conjures up sounds of exquisite beauty and compelling poignancy.” Wolfgang Wagner’s production emphasizes the celebratory character of the libretto, which harmonizes superbly with Sinopoli’s insistence on the poetry and mystery of the music. A major role in the staging is played by the lighting, which is used to create stunning effects such as the diffuse play of light and shadow at the illumination of the Holy Grail. One of the production’s most striking moments occurs when the director has Kundry unveil the Grail instead of dying. She thus takes full part in the Grail ceremony, displaying a feminism which, in the Bayreuth context, is truly revolutionary.
Siegfried
In 1988, conductor Daniel Barenboim, stage director Harry Kupfer, set designer Hans Schavernoch and costume designer Reinhard Heinrich came to Bayreuth to realize their vision of Wagner’s Ring. They firmly turned away from the work’s time of origin and set their sights on a “critique of the history of mankind and of the entire evolution of culture, the destruction of which we are actively furthering” (Kupfer). While Wagner’s “critique of mankind’s desructive frenzy, its coldness and alienation” (Kupfer) was rooted in Germanic mythology, Kupfer’s team locates its Ring in a present that also embraces the past and the future. The place where present, past and future converge is the “road of history”, which sets the scene for struggles of power and love, and takes us straight into the depths of the human psyche. “Harry Kupfer has created a production of great coherency, hard, cutting, transparent, which will delight those who see in Wagner a contemporary and will displease those who consume Wagner like some consecrated artifact in a museum. The entire mythological apparatus is demolished bit by bit: what remains is what Wagner himself wanted: the ‘pure humanity’ of the myth. […] The entire ‘Ring’ unfolds like an intellectual adventure that provokes unforgettable emotions.” (La Repubblica)
Die Walküre
In 1988, conductor Daniel Barenboim, stage director Harry Kupfer, set designer Hans Schavernoch and costume designer Reinhard Heinrich came to Bayreuth to realize their vision of Wagner’s Ring. They firmly turned away from the work’s time of origin and set their sights on a “critique of the history of mankind and of the entire evolution of culture, the destruction of which we are actively furthering” (Kupfer). While Wagner’s “critique of mankind’s desructive frenzy, its coldness and alienation” (Kupfer) was rooted in Germanic mythology, Kupfer’s team locates its Ring in a present that also embraces the past and the future. The place where present, past and future converge is the “road of history”, which sets the scene for struggles of power and love, and takes us straight into the depths of the human psyche. “Harry Kupfer has created a production of great coherency, hard, cutting, transparent, which will delight those who see in Wagner a contemporary and will displease those who consume Wagner like some consecrated artifact in a museum. The entire mythological apparatus is demolished bit by bit: what remains is what Wagner himself wanted: the ‘pure humanity’ of the myth. […] The entire ‘Ring’ unfolds like an intellectual adventure that provokes unforgettable emotions.” (La Repubblica)
Tannhäuser
“Thunderous applause, elation”, wrote the prestigious Germany daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and Rome’s La Repubblica noted the “triumphal success and storm of applause” that greeted Giuseppe Sinopoli and the ensemble at Tannhäuser’s 1989 Bayreuth Festival premiere. Directed by Wolfgang Wagner, Richard Wagner’s grandson, this Tannhäuser production was one of the high points of the Bayreuth Festival during the latter part of the 1980s. The abstract starkness of Wolfgang Wagner’s production is underscored by the crystalline clarity and vigor of Giuseppe Sinopoli’s conducting, which particularly highlights the progressive aspects of the score. This Tannhäuser production gathers together some of the great Wagner singers of our time such as Cheryl Studer (Elizabeth), Wolfgang Brendel (Wolfram), Richard Versalle (Tannhäuser) and Hans Sotin (Landgrave).
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
Wolfgang Wagner’s universally praised Bayreuth Festival production of “Die Meistersinger” most clearly demonstrates the originality of its conception in its treatment of Beckmesser. Refusing to caricature Beckmesser, to represent him simply as a fool or a pedant, Wolfgang Wagner allows the character the status of a genuine poet with a melancholy, almost elegiac quality. The production dispenses with the usual clichés and the excessive pathos which often lend the opera an overly “German” quality, and concentrates on the specifically human aspect of the characters, which other productions have tended to neglect. Hans Sachs is seen not as a solemn patriarch, but as a likable middle-aged man; Stolzing emerges as a sensitive, thoughtful individual drawn towards the bourgeoisie, rather than as an aggressive aristocrat. Wolfgang Wagner has succeeded in liberating “Die Meistersinger” from its aura of Teutonic heaviness and retrieving the light and color of the original: late medieval Nuremberg truly comes to life.
Der Fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman)
For his production of “The Flying Dutchman”, premiered in 1978, Harry Kupfer chose the original Dresden version of 1843, which has a rougher, more muscular texture than the subsequent editions. When “The Flying Dutchman” was performed in Zurich and Munich, Wagner himself revised the work, softening the instrumentation and appending the “redemption” conclusions to the overture and the third act. What was the reason for the heated disputes which took place between the conservative Bayreuth Wagnerians and the more progressive lovers of the composer’s music? Harry Kupfer’s production presents the entire story of the Flying Dutchman as a hallucination, a figment of Senta’s disturbed imagination. She is seen by the director as a highly neurotic, even schizophrenic young girl, whose yearning for the eternally wandering Dutchman puts her into a trance-like state, in which her own internal drama is acted out in the form of a vision. By having the character leap through the window to her death at the end of the opera, Harry Kupfer has placed a highly personal interpretation on Wagner’s notion of “redemption”.
Götterdämmerung
In 1988, conductor Daniel Barenboim, stage director Harry Kupfer, set designer Hans Schavernoch and costume designer Reinhard Heinrich came to Bayreuth to realize their vision of Wagner’s Ring. They firmly turned away from the work’s time of origin and set their sights on a “critique of the history of mankind and of the entire evolution of culture, the destruction of which we are actively furthering” (Kupfer). While Wagner’s “critique of mankind’s destructive frenzy, its coldness and alienation” (Kupfer) was rooted in Germanic mythology, Kupfer’s team locates its Ring in a present that also embraces the past and the future. The place where present, past and future converge is the “road of history”, which sets the scene for struggles of power and love, and takes us straight into the depths of the human psyche. “Harry Kupfer has created a production of great coherency, hard, cutting, transparent, which will delight those who see in Wagner a contemporary and will displease those who consume Wagner like some consecrated artifact in a museum. The entire mythological apparatus is demolished bit by bit: what remains is what Wagner himself wanted: the ‘pure humanity’ of the myth. […] The entire ‘Ring’ unfolds like an intellectual adventure that provokes unforgettable emotions.” (La Repubblica)
Die Walküre
It began with a scandal, became the object of heated discussions, turned into a sensational success and finally blossomed into a legendary, standard setting production: Pierre Boulez’ and Patrice Chéreau’s epoch-making “Ring” cycle in Bayreuth, the “Centennial Ring”. When the production was premiered in 1976, there were brawls in the venerable Festspielhaus, with the audience divided into one mob roaring in favor and one screaming against. The main reason for the protests was Chéreau, who set the work in the time in which it was written and focused on the all-too-human passions that motivate gods and men alike. The grimy industrial era with its robber barons and suffering masses supplied the ideological underpinnings of Chéreau’s concept. Musical conservatives felt betrayed and cheapened by this association. The tide began to turn in 1977. Certain features were altered and the production began to have a more homogeneous feel. Finally, in 1980, its last year, the Ring concluded with a 90-minute ovation and 110 curtain calls. By the time Philips released the complete recording of this production in 1992, its legendary status had already begun to take shape: “Patrice Chéreau and Pierre Boulez not only wrote a major new chapter in Wagner interpretation with their Ring, but also carried out a revolution that affected all of musical theater. Since then, no production of the Ring has been able to come near to the concept put forward by Chéreau and Boulez.” (FonoForum) Unitel’s production, the first complete recording on film of Wagner’s Ring, marked the beginning of Unitel’s exclusive association with the Bayreuth Festival.