This new production of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen at the Bayreuth Festival was the opera event of the 2022 festival season. Young director Valentin Schwarz reimagines the mythical story in the present day and tells a gripping family saga in the world of the rich and powerful. The musical direction is in the hands of Cornelius Meister. The final part of the tetralogy sees Siegfried abandon his beloved Brünnhilde, allowing himself to be taken in by the Gibichungen and the unscrupulous Hagen and succumbing to the advances of Gutrune. Schwarz once more features the powerful symbol of a child and turns the horse Grane into a human companion of Brünnhilde, who also plays a central role in the shocking final image.
Bayreuth Festival 2022: Das Rheingold
This new production of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen at the Bayreuth Festival was the opera event of the 2022 Festival summer. Young director Valentin Schwarz reimagines the mythical story in the present day and tells a gripping family saga in the world of the rich and powerful. The musical direction is in the hands of Cornelius Meister. In Das Rheingold, the antagonists Wotan and Alberich are hostile twin brothers and it is not the gold from the Rhine that is stolen at the outset, but a child, emphasizing the fact that dynasties are always overshadowed by the question of who will one day inherit power.