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Further Reading, Listening and Viewing
CD recordings
The first complete studio recording of Der Ring des Nibelungen - made by Decca between 1958 and 1966 - has stood the test of time remarkably well. Partly this is due to John Culshaw’s imaginative production and the immediate Decca sound, but the cast was as good as could be assembled at that period, and conductor Sir Georg Solti, who conducted many exciting Wagner performances at Covent Garden during his tenure as music director, draws vivid playing from the Vienna Philharmonic. Many of the central interpretations - notably Birgit Nilsson’s fearless Brünnhilde, Wolfgang Windgassen’s resolute Siegfried and Hans Hotter’s deeply felt Wotan (in two out of three operas: George London sings Das Rheingold) - remain unsurpassed, and there are striking interventions from the likes of Kirsten Flagstad as the Rheingold Fricka, Régine Crespin’s Sieglinde, and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau’s Gunther.
From Philips comes a live Bayreuth Ring recorded in 1966-7 and led by the authoritative Karl Böhm, who adopts a more lyrical approach than the dynamic Solti. He shares Nilsson, Windgassen and Gustav Neidlinger’s feisty Alberich with his Hungarian-born colleague, reserving for himself Theo Adam’s expressive Wotan.
James Levine’s Met set on DG is not so evenly cast nor so memorably conducted, but there are notable performances from the likes of Christa Ludwig (Fricka), Jessye Norman (Sieglinde), Kathleen Battle (Woodbird) Heinz Zednik (Mime) and Kurt Moll (Hunding), while the New York players are on pristine form.
A more recent Teldec set was recorded in 1991-2 at Bayreuth, where conductor Daniel Barenboim shows a mastery of Wagnerian pacing and leads a strong cast – including Anne Evans’s appealing Brünnhilde, Siegfried Jerusalem’s energised Siegfried and John Tomlinson’s full-on Wotan.
Two other issues are well worth exploring. Sung in Andrew Porter’s English translation, ENO’s memorable Ring conducted by Reginald Goodall and starring Alberto Remedios (Siegfried), Rita Hunter (Brünnhilde) and Norman Bailey (Wotan) remains a remarkable achievement after more than 30 years. It’s available in the Chandos Opera in English series. Recently, Testament has been issuing an earlier (1955) Bayreuth Ring under the distinguished baton of Joseph Keilberth and starring Hotter, Windgassen and Astrid Varnay, which was kept under wraps for half a century before seeing the light of day. It’s been well worth the wait.
For those seeking an antidote to too much Wagner at one go, try Oscar Straus’s operetta Die lustigen Nibelungen, which got him into a lot of trouble in Vienna in 1904. This delightful piece of irreverent parody can be found on the Capriccio label.
DVD recordings
Undoubtedly one of the most important operatic productions of the twentieth century was Patrice Chéreau’s centenary staging of the Ring at Bayreuth, unveiled in 1976. Chéreau’s politically charged scheme, which sought to place the work in the context of the Industrial Revolution and its impact, was deemed revolutionary at the time and had noisy opponents, but it was gradually recognised as a masterly piece of theatre and has proved extremely influential. Recorded in 1980, the cycle (available from DG) is also notable for the clarity and detail of Pierre Boulez’s conducting, and for persuasive central performances from Donald McIntyre, Gwyneth Jones and Manfred Jung. An extra DVD includes much fascinating documentary material on its creation.
Warner Classics has issued their more recent (1991-2) Bayreuth Ring in four individual DVD instalments, conducted by Daniel Barenboim and with the Brünnhilde of Anne Evans challenging the hegemony of John Tomlinson’s Wotan, herself won and then betrayed by the Siegfried of Siegfried Jerusalem. Harry Kupfer’s hi-tech staging provides an engrossing visual and dramatic experience in itself.
Conceived along far more traditional lines is the Met’s Ring as realised in 1990 by designer Günther Schneider-Siemssen and director Otto Schenk. It undeniably offers many visual beauties as it attempts to follow Wagner’s stage directions much more closely than is usual nowadays. But it also has an impressive cast, led by James Morris’s Wotan, Siegfried Jerusalem’s Siegfried, Ekkehard Wlaschiha’s Alberich and Hildegard Behrens’s Brünnhilde.
Also available in four individual instalments, the 1999 Amsterdam Ring directed by Pierre Audi is something of a pyromaniac’s dream, with spectacular fire effects included in George Tsypin’s designs. Three different Dutch orchestras contribute to the cycle, and are sometimes present on stage. The standard of singing, especially from John Bröcheler’s Wotan and Jeannine Altmeyer’s Brünnhilde, is regularly admirable, while Hartmut Haenchen’s conducting shows a fine grasp of the work’s prodigious architectural structure.
Fritz Lang’s 1924 silent film Siegfried -- drawn not directly from Wagner, but from the composer’s sources -- remains an outstanding piece of cinema and is available from Tartan Video. It’s also one of a series of Wagner-related films being shown at the British Film Institute to coincide with the first of Covent Garden’s three cycles. A behind-the-scenes documentary filmed by Jon Else during a 1990 production of The Ring at the San Francisco Opera has won several awards: available from the New Video Group, Sing Faster views Wagner’s tetralogy from the perspective of the stagehands, and ends with the entire cycle played in just sixty seconds!
Further reading
Though it’s not literally true - as is sometimes claimed -- that there are more books devoted to Wagner than to any other individuals apart from Jesus and Napoleon, the most controversial of the great composers has nevertheless generated a vast and ever-expanding literature.
An ideal short introduction is contained in Aspects of Wagner by the philosopher and former MP Bryan Magee, who covers a huge amount of territory in a short space (Oxford Paperbacks). Much essential material on Wagner’s life and works can be found in The Wagner Compendium, edited by the indefatigable Barry Millington, who probably knows more about the composer than Wagner did himself and whose Thames & Hudson volume is notable for its clarity and succinctness.
Stewart Spencer’s Wagner Remembered (Faber & Faber) draws on a wide range of contemporary views of a figure regarded as a giant in his own lifetime. There’s a wide-ranging collection of Wagner’s letters in Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, edited by Spencer and Millington and published by Dent. The Wagner dynasty itself – his grandson Wolfgang still runs the Bayreuth Festival, where his great-granddaughter Katharina made her debut this year with her production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg – is the subject of a forthcoming volume by Jonathan Carr, to be published by Faber & Faber.
Of many biographies, Joachim Köhler’s sizeable 2004 study Richard Wagner: the Last of the Titans (Yale University Press) places the artist well in the context of nineteenth-century culture. Far more controversial is the same author’s Wagner’s Hitler: The Prophet and His Disciple (Polity Press), though Köhler’s interpretations of the operas themselves have been much challenged. But the disturbing, anti-Semitic aspect to Wagner himself is central to Köhler’s second study as it is also to Richard Wagner, Fritz Lang and the Nibelungen: the Dramaturgy of Disavowal, by David J. Levin, from Princeton University Press.
The impact of Wagner on theatre as a whole is the subject of Patrick Carnegy’s highly informed and thoroughly researched Wagner and the Art of the Theatre, published by Yale University Press. On the tetralogy in particular, Thames & Hudson have issued Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung: A Companion, including the full librettos of the four operas plus Stewart Spencer’s excellent annotated translations, together with a table of Leitmotifs and a stage history. Texts and translations -- in this case the much admired singing versions by Andrew Porter -- can also be found in the appropriate volumes in the English National Opera Guides available from Calder Publications.
From Oberon Books, John Snelson’s The Ring: an Illustrated History of Wagner’s Ring at the Royal Opera House is meticulously documented and lavishly illustrated, offering fascinating insights into the changing styles of production at one major opera house over more than a century.
Also, in September 2007 the Royal Opera House will publish The Power of the Ring, a new book by Gary Kahn about Keith Warner’s production of Wagner’s Ring for the Royal Opera