Wagner: Der Ring des Nibelungen

Includes: Das Rheingold * Die Walkure * Siegfried * Gotterdamerung CAST LIST Fritz Hubner, Franz Mazura, Donald McIntyre, Siegfried Jerusalem, Heinz Zednik, Manfred Jung, Dame Gwyneth Jones, Hermann Becht, Hanna Schwarz, Peter Hofmann, Jeanine Altmeyer, Matti Salminen, Gabriele Schnaut, Gwendolyn Killebrew, Bayreuth Festival Orchestra and Pierre Boulez, conductor. "Patrice Chereau's Bayreuth Centenary Ring may be more than twenty-five years old but it remains an iconic and defining production. Both he and conductor Pierre Boulez rethought approaches to Wagner, so much so that the orchestra threatened to go on strike if Boulez did not allow them to play the way they'd always played. Chereau set the action in the Industrial Age at the time the Ring was written, relating it to the political thinking of the time and humanising the characters. The cast was the cast of the day led by Donald McIntyre's frock-coated industrialist Wotan, and a redoubtable but touching Brunnhilde from Gwyneth Jones. Boulez pared back the music to, at times, chamber orchestra proportions. The result was a triumph which redefined Wagner production for the modern era and is still as powerful today as when first seen."--BBC Radio