Ring Saga

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Opera, 2011
Richard Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelung
Rheingold, The Valkyrie, Siegfried, Twilight of the Gods
Version by Jonathan Dove and Graham Vick, 1990
Music direction : Peter Rundel
Stage direction : Antoine Gindt
Stage direction collaboration : Élodie Brémaud
Stage direction assistant : Janick Moisan
Dramaturgy, translation : Aleksi Barrière and Laurent Prost
Scenography : Élise Capdenat, assisted by Pia de Compiègne
Lights : Daniel Lévy
Creative coding : Tomek Jarolim
Costumes : Fanny Brouste, assisted by Peggy Sturm
Make-up/hair : Véronique Nguyen
Accessories : Martin Gautron
With Remix Ensemble Casa da Música 

In 1990, playwright Graham Vick – founder of the City of Birmingham Touring Opera – and composer Jonathan Dove, perform an adaptation of the famous Richard Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung. While maintaining the exceptional size of the structure, two key decisions direct their version: the reduction of the duration to ten hours (approximately one-third less than the original) and the orchestration for eighteen musicians (small orchestra that Wagner employed for his Siegfried Idyll 1870). This version, critical and public success for its dramaturgical choices for his musical achievement (Prudential Award 1990), remained unpublished in France, as elsewhere in Europe. It has many attractions for those interested in the Ring in an original way: respect for the “text” and its proportions (the choices never punish the narrative principle), the chamber-music bias (suitable to theatrical nature of the work), the freedom inherent to a version that can usefully break with established dogma too, as evidenced by the recent publication (from Eulenburg) the “Urtext” annotated by Wagner at the Bayreuth creation in 1876. In this new production Ring Saga, another ambition come up : the show takes back the idea of a festival – so important to Wagner – the four operas being given in a weekend from Friday evening to Sunday, to create the greatest possible continuity and understanding of the issues – and it also aims to find with today’s tools, the utopian spirit with which Wagner was able to build the ring, over a quarter of a century.

Dates :

september 16th-18th, 2011 : Casa da Música, Porto
september 30th – october 2nd, 2011 : Festival Musica, Palais des Fêtes de Strasbourg
october 7th-9th, 2011 : Cité de la Musique, Paris
october 14th-16th, 2011 : Théâtre de Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines
november 4th-6th, 2011 : Théâtre de Nîmes
november 18th-20th, 2011 : Théâtre de Caën
december 2nd-4th, 2011 : Grand Théâtre du Luxembourg
december 9th-11th, 2011 :  Opéra de Reims
november 30th – december 1st, 2012 : Teatro Valli de Reggio Emilia

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