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Is there any other person in the universe who is so fortunate as to have designed eight productions of Richard Wagner's colossal Ring Cycle - four great mythic operas about man and the cosmos and the rise and fall of the gods? A world record. What a stage designer would give for a chance to do one Ring in his lifetime!
But perhaps it is not merely fortuitous that the visual interpretation of this visually and musically challenging work should so often in the last 50 years be Günther Schneider-Siemssen's domain. They simply belong together - a cosmic opera and the one man in theater for whom the stage is "cosmic space" and who firmly believes that "Wagner without a cosmic dimension is altogether impossible."
| Designing the RINGS |  |
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Rings 1 & 2: Bremen and London - the Ring on a moving disc
Günther Schneider-Siemssen was a young artist when he designed his first Ring - in 1958, for the Theater on Goetheplatz in Bremen, Germany. It was in Bremen where he spent his "years of learning and wandering" (Lehr und Wanderjahre) as production director from 1954-62 and where his vision of the stage as cosmic space began to take shape. His Bremen sets, supported on a moving disc-shaped platform were so innovative and made quite an impression on Sir Georg Solti, then Music Director at Covent Garden who beckoned him to the Royal Opera House to design the London Ring. Needless to say, his second Ring was a huge success. (Click HERE for Schneider-Siemssen's own description of his stage designs.)
Rings 3 & 4: Salzburg Easter Festival and the Met - the cosmic ellipse and painting with light
In 1967, Herbert von Karajan's new Easter Festival in Salzburg became the venue for his third Ring, which opened with Die Walküre instead of Das Rheingold, in defiance of the opera's logical structure - today still a puzzling move by the revered Maestro who at the time probably needed for his new festival the guarantee of success that Die Walküre, but not Rheingold, could give.
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Salzburg
on the contrary offers a rich kaleidoscope of skillful shades chosen
one after another. The stage designs of Schneider-Siemssen, grandly
symbolize the "Ring" in all three acts as a radiating wreath around
the forest cottage of victory with the linden-tree, the circular path
or mountain craters. The stage picture in the second act is like a
current of melting rocks, the third act like a hardened storm. Never
have I seen anything more impressive than the sleeping Brünnhilde
on the flame engulfed rocks. There it was actually possible, to hear
with the eyes! - Bernard Gavoty, French critic |
Schneider-Siemssen based the entire production on an ellipse which
empowered him to transform the stage into a truly cosmic space. His
skillful use of lights and projections produced magnificent visual
effects; he called the process "painting with light."
Walküre generated a lot of excitement worldwide, eliciting
an invitation from the Metropolitan Opera to reproduce the Salzburg
Ring in New York. (The entire Salzburg production which was constructed
for the Festival Hall's 33-meter wide stage, could not of course be
shipped to New York; instead the designer's ideas were adapted to
the Met's 16-meter wide stage.) Rheingold, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung
were staged in the succeeding years. No records, audio or visual,
of the Salzburg Ring are known to exist today other than some stage
photos and Schneider- Siemssen's sketches and paintings, some of which
are reproduced HERE
along with a description of the sets in the designer's own words.
The modified version of this production at the Metropolitan Opera was enthusiastically received, with Europeans flocking to New York to experience a romantic Ring that they believed to be true to Wagner's spirit and vision. It ran from 1967-72 and involved three of the world's most eminent conductors: Karajan (Walküre), Erich Leinsdorf (Rheingold and Siegfried) and Rafael Kubelik (Götterdämmerung). |
Ring 5: Teatro di San Carlo (Naples)
Ring 5 was designed and produced in the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, Italy. Schneider-Siemssen was pleased to discover that Richard Wagner's grandson Wieland Wagner had produced the Ring Cycle there three times. Vienna's Wolfgang Weber directed this successful production and Elio Boncampagni, the new conducting discovery of the time, led the orchestra.
Ring 6: Metropolitan Opera - 'Wagner after their own hearts, a romanticism for the space age'
In 1986 Schneider-Siemssen was summoned to the Met to design a completely new and truly romantic Ring - his sixth. The assignment came as a great surprise for conventional wisdom held that a theater, especially one as renowned as the Met, never calls on a designer to design the same work twice, and after two decades at that. His longest-lived Ring, it is beloved by audiences from all over the world because, unlike other contemporary productions that are visually littered with sociological or psychoanalytical incongruities, it is natural and romantic - it is "Wagner after their own hearts."
| It was clearly an overwhelming success. The designer himself notes that this highly romantic Ring, first staged in 1987 and running through 1992, revived in 1997, and then again in 2000, "...struck the hearts of opera fans. I have rarely seen such exultation as at these premieres." | "Yes,
I believe firmly that new romanticism has been successful, a romanticism
for the space age, a bold modern romanticism, in which Wagner would
have been delighted."* - Günther Schneider-Siemssen |
| Click HERE to view some stage designs and scenes from this Ring at the Met with excerpts from Schneider-Siemssen's own commentaries. | |
| Ring 7: Warsaw - a cultural and political event | |
| The
seventh Ring was staged in Warsaw's Großen Oper when
the city was still behind the iron curtain. It was directed by the
late August Everding, long-time general director of the Munich State
Theaters, a revered figure in opera, and by Schneider-Siemssen's own
estimation, the person who most deeply understands his concept of
"the stage as cosmic space." The orchestra was conducted
by Robert Satanovsky, general music director of the Warsaw Opera.
The first complete German Ring in Warsaw, it was both a big cultural and political event - an eloquent symbol of the final reconciliation of Germany and Poland and an affirmation of the power of music to bridge seemingly insurmountable gaps between peoples. Click HERE for photos of the stage designs. |
"In
the first complete, German Ring in Warsaw we did not want to
illustrate any politically relevant references, Günther Schneider-Siemssen
told the story of this drama with colorful and ghostly pictures of
the dwarfs and giants, the Gods and humans. He is not afraid of the
big theatrical gesture - when worlds collapse and the stars shine."* - August Everding |
Ring 8: Wagner Festival Wels (Austria) and Theatre Aachen (Germany)
This is a work in progress through 2002 - in which Günther Schneider-Siemssen does it all as he assumes the triple roles of stage director, set designer, and lighting designer: the artist in total control of his cosmic space, empowering the audience to hear and see the music!
Elsewhere in FanFaire... more on Richard Wagner and The Ring Cycle.
