It Begins: The Wiener Staatsoper's Ring Cycle
Yes. Wagner. Here we go. This Das Rheingold was my first experience with Wagner of any kind at the Staatsoper and my first time seeing the Ring live. This performance was interesting to me because, looking at it beforehand, I recognized many of the performers as those that I had seen in R. Strauss operas and in Beethoven's Fidelio , other operas that require voices comparable in size and stamina to those demanded Wagnerian operas. Oddly, many of these singers were not thrilling to me in other roles, flaws in their voices at times rather evident in this repertoire. The singing here, was, however, more or less excellent. The costuming and sets were, in general, mediocre with a few interesting things here and there. Still, the somewhat incomprehensible improvement of the singers even compared to repertoire with similar demands. General information & synopsis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Rheingold DAS RHEINGOLD | Richard Wagner C...