A highlight of the Virtual Bayreuth Festival on DG Stage: Castorf's 'Ring'
While the doors of the opera house will remain closed during this festival summer season, Deutsche Grammophon and the Bayreuth Festival have joined forces to provide Wagner fans with a multifaceted program of productions from recent years in “DG Stage – The Classical Concert Hall”.
Besides operas like the thrilling performance of Tobias Kratzers ‘Tannhäuser’ under the baton of Valery Gergiev with Lise Davidsen as Elisabeth or ‘Lohengrin’ with Piotr Bezcala in the leading role, conducted by Christian Thielemann, the program features two productions of the ‘Ring’ on DG Stage: Chéreau’s acclaimed century Ring from 1976 (recorded 1980) with Pierre Boulez conducting, and Frank Castorf’s controversial Ring from 2013.
The Gold of our Times: Oil
The Castorf Ring begins on August 8, 2020. The four-part cycle was recorded live in Bayreuth, musically directed by Marek Janowski. Frank Castorf succeeded in bringing a ‘whole new perspective to the piece’, says Katharina Wagner. He made the first part of Wagners tetralogy, ‘Das Rheingold’, take place at a gas station on Route 66. ‘Die Walküre’ is set in Baku, Azerbaijan, which in 1920 was occupied by the Bolsheviks for its oil. ‘Siegfried’ plays out in a socialist equivalent of Mount Rushmore and Berlin Alexanderplatz, while ‘Götterdämmerung’ takes place in the former GDR and later on Wall Street in New York.
While Castorfs production polarized critics, Marek Janowskis musical effort was hailed in unison just as the exceptional performances of the singers; among them Iain Paterson, Nadine Weissmann, Christopher Ventris, Georg Zeppenfeld, Stefan Vinke, Andreas Conrad and Catherine Foster.
Dates for the individual operas of the Castorf Ring on DG Stage:
