Wagner’s visionary first installment of the Ring Cycle depicts the original sin of the theft of the sacred golden treasure, the vanity of the gods, the greed of the Nibelungen, the fratricide of the giants, and the building of Valhalla.
Tomasz Konieczny as Alberich in Das Rheingold Photo: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera
Metropolitan Opera Season
WAGNER: Das Rheingold
In the depths of the Rhine, the three Rhinemaidens guard the Rhinegold, a treasure of immeasurable value. The Nibelung dwarf Alberich is dazzled by the sight of it. The young women explain that whoever wins the gold and forges it into a ring will gain power over the world, but must first renounce love. Frustrated by his unsuccessful attempts to catch one of the maidens, Alberich curses love and steals the gold...
And so begins the great journey of the Rhinegold.
Cast:
Wendy Bryn Harmer (Freia), Jamie Barton (Fricka), Karen Cargill (Erda), Norbert Ernst (Loge), Gerhard Siegel (Mime), Greer Grimsley (Wotan), Tomasz Konieczny (Alberich), Günther Groissböck (Fasolt), Dmitry Belosselskiy (Fafner), Metropolitan Opera Orchestra conducted by Philippe Jordan
Samantha Hankey as Wellgunde, Amanda Woodbury as Woglinde, Tamara Mumford as Flosshilde Photo: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera
Conceived by Wagner as a prologue to his monumental Ring cycle, this work sets forth the dramatic and theoretical issues that play out in the three subsequent music dramas. The confrontations and dialogue in Das Rheingold are punctuated by thrilling musical and dramatic coups, and the entire work has a magnificent sweep. With Das Rheingold, Wagner fully realized his much-discussed system of leitmotifs (musical themes associated with specific things, people, or ideas). This technique is at its most accessible in this opera; in the later parts of the Ring, the number of leitmotifs multiplies, their use becoming more and more ambitious and intricate.
A scene from Das Rheingold Photo: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera
The action of Das Rheingold takes place in mythic locales below and above (symbolically, at least) the earth: the depths of the Rhine, mountaintops, and the caves of the toiling dwarves.
The time is an unspecified era before history, where the actions of human beings do not yet affect the universal order of things.
A scene from Das Rheingold Photo: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera
Richard Wagner (1813–1883) was the complex, controversial creator of music–drama masterpieces that stand at the center of today’s operatic repertory. Born in Leipzig, Germany, he was an artistic revolutionary who re-imagined every supposition about music and theatre.
Robert Lepage’s innovative staging of opera’s ultimate epic, Wagner’s four-installment Der Ring des Nibelungen, is one of the most ambitious productions ever conceived for the operatic stage.
Lepage’s staging relies on what has become known as “the machine,” a 90,000-pound apparatus that comprises 24 30-foot-long aluminum planks suspended between two 26-foot-tall steel towers, plus the requisite machinery to make the planks rise, fall, and spin. An ingenious piece of stagecraft, the machine incorporates several complex systems that must operate in perfect harmony.
