05/25/19 – Das Rheingold – 1pm (Royal Opera House)
The Royal Opera House’s Das Rheingold
Title: Das Rheingold
Hosts: Tom Service and Lisa Flynn
Broadcast Producer: BBC
WFMT Series Producer: Daniel Goldberg
Conductor: Antonio Pappano
Cast (In order of vocal appearance):
Woglinde – Lauren Fagan
Wellgunde – Christina Bock
Flosshilde– Andela Simkin
Alberichr – Johannes Martin Kränzle
Wotan – John Lundgren
Fricka – Sarah Connolly
Freia – Lise Davidsen
Fasolt – Günther Groissböck
Fafner– Brindley Sherratt
Froh – Andrew Staples
Donner – Marcus Eiche
Loge– Alan Oke
Mime – Gerhard Siegel
Erda – Wiebke Lehmkuhl
Das Rheingold is the ‘preliminary evening’ of Richard Wagner’s four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen. The shortest of the four, it introduces the characters that will drive this magnificent drama to its epic conclusion, and the musical themes that Wagner ingeniously develops through the cycle. Das Rheingold was first performed in 1869, and the second opera Die Walküre in 1870 – before the rest of the cycle was completed, and against Wagner’s wishes that the Ring be considered a unified whole. The cycle’s first complete performance in 1876 was a momentous event in opera history.
Das Rheingold famously begins with a musical representation of the flowing river Rhine. In his 2004 production for The Royal Opera, Keith Warner sets this opening in complete darkness: as the textures of Wagner’s music gradually intensify, so this universe slowly comes into being. Much of the production draws on 20th-century imagery to depict a world at the beginning of its decline, with the nightmarish laboratories of the Nibelungs contrasting vividly with the gods’ moneyed indulgence.
