Considering “Der Ring des Nibelungen” — Richard Wagner’s operatic magnum opus — from any angle is daunting.
The operatic equivalent of a marathon, which has been known to run as much as 19 hours across four evenings, depending on the staging, demands the utmost attention of its dozens of singers and musicians, as well as its intrepid conductor and director, and tests the endurance of its audience. Cue the music and the quadruple cappuccino.
For the first time in more than a decade, the Teatro alla Scala in Milan is mounting a new “Ring” cycle, as the full four-opera extravaganza is known. The opera house is capping off a 15-month run-up to the big finale: It began in October 2024 with “Das Rheingold,” the first of the four German-language operas that make up the “Ring,” then added “Die Walküre” and “Siegfried” earlier this year. To finish, La Scala will stage “Götterdämmerung,” the final opera, in February for five performances.
Two full “Ring” cycles will follow in March to commemorate the 150th anniversary of their first staging as a tetralogy, in 1876 at the inaugural Bayreuth Festival, the annual summer event honoring Wagner’s operas.
“Götterdämmerung,” which clocks in at around five hours, is to many the most daunting — and the most rewarding — of the four operas. It depicts gods and monsters of Norse mythology interacting with humans, who exhibit all-too-human frailties, continuing a story that began with a theft of gold beneath the Rhine River.
Two different conductors are set to share the podium: Simone Young, 64, who in 2024 became the first woman to conduct the “Ring” at Bayreuth (and who also conducted there this summer), and Alexander Soddy, 42, another Wagner veteran, whom Young once mentored. They replace Christian Thielemann, who in late 2024 withdrew from conducting all remaining performances of the tetralogy and the two “Ring” cycles, citing tendon surgery and a lengthy recovery.
Soddy will conduct “Götterdämmerung” on Feb. 1, 4 and 8. Young will do so on Feb. 12 and 17. Soddy will conduct the first “Ring,” March 1-7, and Young the second, March 10-15.
For Young, the legacies of two major Wagnerian interpreters — the conductors Daniel Barenboim, who oversaw the last “Ring” in 2013 at La Scala, and Wilhelm Furtwängler — will be very much a part of this undertaking in 2026.
“Thirty-four years ago, I was Daniel Barenboim’s assistant at Bayreuth, and 20 years ago, Alexander was my assistant in Hamburg, and Daniel had learned much from Furtwängler,” Young said in a video interview. “It’s a continuation of a generational passing on of the flame.”
Young and Soddy share a similar approach that arises from where they both first attempted to tackle Wagner’s music: at the piano.
“We both started our professional lives as répétiteurs, which is the pianist who’s sitting in the rehearsal room at the opera making the piano sound like an orchestra,” she said. “I translate this to an artist who works in very complex textures and colors. It all has to be there.”
Both conductors are also very focused on the text, which, particularly in Wagner, dictates what the sound should be, Young explained. For example, she said, if the word on a note has a short vowel and a lot of consonants, then everyone should hear those consonants; the orchestral sound should extend as long as the vowel and then cut off just as the consonants kick in.
For Soddy, his drive to conquer Wagner goes back to his roots with Young, as well as a need to understand Wagner’s lush score both musically and verbally.
In a video interview, he recalled how Young had inspired him when they first crossed paths.
“I was very fortunate at age 21 to get the position at the Hamburg State Opera as a pianist, and that was the time when Simone arrived and when we first met,” Soddy said. “She was such an incredibly powerful musical influence on me, because I’d met someone who thought about language and music in the way I’d always wanted to think about it.”
After formative years as répétiteurs, they both took a Wagnerian deep dive and found that those hours and days at the piano gave them far more insight into the intricacies of the “Ring.”
“The thing that strikes you the most is the density of musical ideas and the level of genius that it took not only to create these motifs, but to weave them into a kind of a web that makes sense,” Soddy said. “You just get this sense of mastery, and I just think even the first act of ‘Götterdämmerung,’ which runs near two hours, I find structurally is so beautifully clear and so emotionally beautifully set out. It’s a great ride.”
For David McVicar, the director and set designer (with Hannah Postlethwaite), this “Ring” is his first time on that ride.
“We’re never, ever finished with the ‘Ring’ because there’s so much complexity, and it covers so many subjects, and you can look at it from so many angles,” McVicar said in a video interview. “For this production, I wanted to be deeply connected to the music, because I’ve seen a lot of ‘Ring’ productions where the music is like a soundtrack, and the music to me is paramount.”
He has been working on this cycle with some of the foremost Wagnerian singers, among them Klaus Florian Vogt, Michael Volle and Camilla Nylund. Many reviewers have praised the singing and musical clarity of the productions, though they have taken issue with the more conservative staging.
Yet McVicar said his staging was a deliberate choice to let the music and words shine through, allowing audiences to find something in the works beyond mere theatrical spectacle.
“What I really wanted to do was leave lots of gaps for the audience’s intellectual investigation,” McVicar said. “What is actually being said here? What is actually going on here? No single interpretive artist can encapsulate everything that is embedded in the work. Wagner himself, when he produced it in 1876, couldn’t encapsulate everything he wanted to, and he felt he had tragically failed.”
That fascination and mystery surrounding Wagner seems to endure for anyone tackling this behemoth. As the “Ring” approaches its 150 anniversary as the zenith of operatic achievement, the composer considered by many to be unparalleled in brilliance — as well as, by many others, to be a racist and a ruthless competitor — remains an enigma.
“I despise Wagner as a human being, but I adore him as an artist,” McVicar said. “Maybe this is one of the reasons I’m so intrigued with him. He’s so universal and encapsulates both the worst and the best of humanity.”
The post La Scala’s First ‘Ring’ in a Decade Passes the Wagnerian Flame appeared first on New York Times.
