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A slide show of stage set designs for the Metropolitan
Opera's Ring Cycle (1987-2000): Das Rheingold |
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Das Rheingold | Die Walkure | Siegfried | Gotterdammerung |  |
This truly Wagnerian Ring of the Nibelung reaches heights of romanticism with the technological tools of the space age which Wagner himself surely would have used had they been available in his day.
In Das Rheingold, this involved finding solutions to how the Rhine maidens could be made to sing and swim at the same time (and other technical problems that arise from the depths of the Rhine to the sweeping arc of the rainbow):
The Rhine maidens... "were positioned on a platform that was continually moving up and down. All of the water was composed of projections of running water, rising and falling water, water reflections lit by sunbeams from above, etc...."
"Alberich's laborious movements, his desperate climbing on the glistening rocks, his slide down, everything was strengthened with precisely focused projections, primarily, so that he could sing his difficult part undisturbed and appear to plod along in desperate movements.
Then I constructed a giant worm for the Nibelheim scene, completely genuine like a Walt Disney picture and with the horror brushstrokes of Spielberg.
Our rainbow was terrific, over which at the conclusion of this evening the Gods ascend to the towering castle Valhalla... We used a special prism, which we produced in the Met's own workshops. ...(H)ow beautiful the colors looked! I must give credit to my colleague Rolf Langenfass.... His costumes for our New York "Ring" were really beautiful; especially remarkable was that they were exactly appropriate for the sets. I marveled at it then and always will - how the work of two artists could yield such a wonderfully agreeable result."*
[From G. Schneider-Siemssen in conversation with K. Pahlen: Die Bühne, mein Leben , Springer Verlag 1996; (The Stage, My Life - English translation by James Mulder, in press)]
Elsewhere in FanFaire... more on Richard Wagner, The Ring Cycle and the Ring at the Met.
