Aga Mikolaj

The La Scala Rheingold in May 2010 inaugurated Guy Cassiers Ring-Cycle and introduces a completely new paradigm to this work. While before him Patrice Chéreau had laid his focus on a historical analysis from 1870 to 1930 Germany, Guy Cassiers’ Ring unfolds “from our own present-day moment; it [takes] place in ‘the now’, the Jetztzeit (Walter Benjamin), placing our present and our future into the context of the promises and curses that we have inherited from history … The Cassiers Ring shows how the globalized moment of 2010 continues to build on the Wagnerian vocabularies of 1870.” (Michael Steinberg) Cast with a number of opera stars like René Pape, Stephan Rügamer, Johannes Martin Kränzle and Anna Larsson and conducted by Daniel Barenboim, this Rheingold is bound to put the audience under its spell.

Götterdämmerung, the final instalment of Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung, is a story of human passions. Two essentially benevolent creatures, involved with and possibly doomed by their traffic with the gods, find treachery and evil in the world of the humans, and are ruined by the dark side of humanity. Iréne Theorin, acclaimed worldwide for her portrayal of Wagner’s heroines, stars as Brünnhilde opposite Lance Ryan, who continues his radiant portrayal of the tragic hero Siegfried. The strong cast also includes Mikhail Petrenko as the dark antagonist Hagen and Johannes Martin Kränzle, who once again shines as his father Alberich. Waltraud Meier has a memorable appearance as Brünnhilde’s sister Waltraute. With this 2013 recording of Götterdämmerung, the musically and visually compelling Scala Ring Cycle by Daniel Barenboim and Guy Cassiers was completed and proved to be one of the highlights of the Richard Wagner bicentenary.