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A SLIDE SHOW OF STAGE SET DESIGNS FOR
THE
RING CYCLE SALZBURG EASTER FESTIVAL (1967-72) |
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The Ring at the Met | The Warsaw Ring |  |
The COSMIC ELLIPSE as structure and symbol in the Salzburg Easter Festival's Ring Cycle
"My basic idea at the time was to set up the whole powerful work on a ring ellipse, on a sort of "cosmic ring", which would become the support structure for everything happening - a static support structure, a symbolic support structure which would have different functions.
In Rheingold the ring-ellipse is still incomplete - with fissures, everything in primeval waters.
In Walküre, it becomes rock and fire as primeval elements.
In Siegfried - Siegfried being a boy of nature, the light bearer of nature - nature dominates: a dense, almost endless forest with an independent existence.
In Götterdämmerung ("The Twilight of the Gods") architecture comes to the stage - which means civilization, and also its downfall. The basic ellipse grows in each drama, towards completion and ultimate breakdown.
That was the big arc that I had in mind. I related it to Karajan, and we went to work."
[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]
NOTE: The "cosmic ellipse" of this festival was also the conceptual foundation of the stage design for the Metropolitan Opera's Ring Cycle of the 1967-72 seasons.
Beyond and around the ellipse - the complexities of designing the Ring Cycle stage: some details about the inspiration for, the conceptualization and the execution of the stage designs - in Schneider-Siemssen's own words: Das Rheingold Die
Walküre Siegfried
Götterdämmerung
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Elsewhere in FanFaire... more on Richard Wagner, The Ring Cycle and the Ring at the Met.
