Wagner's Ring Is Coming To The Met Opera
A Few Thoughts On A New Ring Cycle...
Just heard the news that The Met Opera has announced a series of incredibly exciting upcoming operas, including adaptations of Michael Chabon’s novel “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay”, George Saunders’ novel “Lincoln In The Bardo”1, an adaptation of Ang Lee’s film “The Wedding Banquet” with a libretto by the great James Schamus2 , and a deep dive into the works of Richard Wagner, with a staging of “Parsifal” and, most exciting of all, productions of “Tristan Und Isolde” and a complete “Der Ring des Nibelungen” (!!!!) under the direction of the modern, visionary director Yuval Sharon, who is the Artistic Director of Detroit Opera in my home state of Michigan3.
This past spring, I read Alex Ross' phenomenal book Wagnerism, a masterclass in cultural, biographical, and historical writing about music and art that focuses on the life, works, legacy, and cultural impacts of the work of Richard Wagner. I read the book despite having little prior exposure to Wagner's works, and having seen none of them performed live. Ross does an incredible job of not only presenting what makes these works so important and moving, but also, grappling with what makes that historical and emotional response to his revolutionary works so fraught with problems and complications. It is undeniable that the appropriation of Wagner’s operas4 has transformed their meaning in the culture, but it is equally undeniable that they remain towering musical achievements that continue to define the form. How we experience, engage, and grapple with those two simultaneous truths is the subject of Ross’ fantastic book, a book that any lover of art should read, especially those of us who wrestle with problematic artists and their beloved, profound works.
After reading Ross’ book, I acquired a copy of the libretto for The Ring, with German text on one page facing English text on the other, so I could follow along while giving a complete listen, one of many upcoming projects I will undertake once we get the 2024 Montclair Film Festival completed. All of this is to say that I am VERY excited to have the chance to attend these productions, starting in 2025 and beyond.
Most of all, I am really interested to see what Yuval Sharon does with these monumental operas. I think there are several approaches Sharon could take, but two come immediately to mind. The first is that Sharon, given the resources to stage a generational (literally) performance at the Met Opera, will use the titanic legacy of historical stagings to do something he has never done before, to reach for a different form of spectacle and find a new way of presenting these pieces that harmonizes their themes, the expectations of the legacy of the show, and the thirst for a new vision of these operas that has never been seen before, one which can meaningfully unite the past and the future.
The second outcome I envision is that Sharon could completely reimagine The Ring from the ground up, giving us a new way of experiencing the operas that break away from tradition and expectation, one that would surely be controversial but could ultimately open up the pieces to a new future. Too often, I have seen Regietheater interpretations built around what seems to be a single idea that brings novelty but can’t come close to fully encapsulating the themes of a great work. It can be clever, or may feature a great performance, but end up falling short of presenting a full and unique understanding of the piece. This happens a LOT, in my opinion. I don’t mind recontextualizing works or modernizing classic pieces, but if you’re going to swing big, do it comprehensively by unifying everything around the concept. Too often, the execution falls short of the demands of the work itself. I expect, if Sharon goes this route, his unified presentation would at once embrace the enduring power of the works and also fully encapsulate the entire imaginative world of these pieces.
Again, I have never seen Sharon’s operas, but I have been reading about them for years as he has inspired tremendous debate around projects like “La Boheme In Reverse”5, staged an entire opera called "Hopscotch" that could only be experienced by driving around LA in cars, and, speaking of Wagner, created a pandemic era staging of a heavily condensed “Götterdämmerung” in a Parking Garage in Detroit.
That said, Sharon was also the first American director to stage a Wagner opera at Bayreuth, the theater that Wagner built expressly for the staging of his own operas, including a unique orchestra pit and acoustic design that delivered on his theories about his preferred auditory experience. The Bayreuth Festival is the apex of Wagnerism— it is still run by his heirs, and it is a monument to his works. The reviews of Sharon’s 2018 staging of “Lohengrin” were favorable, but hinted at a dissonance between Wagner’s 19th century conservative sensibilities and Sharon’s 21st century progressive views. How will that tension shape his “Der Ring des Nibelungen”6?
I have to admit, I make no claims to being an opera aficionado or scholar, I have been to the Met Opera several times over the years, but only sparsely. That is not because I don’t enjoy the form or believe in the quality of the works, but I have always felt like an outsider— I don’t know which singers align with which roles, what the “state of the art” looks like, I don’t keep up with trends and recordings, I barely know the history of the form. But when I go, I find it to be a joyful experience. As I have gotten older, I have become more interested, and reading Wagnerism and receiving that context absolutely opened up a new understanding and interest in me— I’ve been to the Met Opera twice in the past year7.
Now that The Met Opera is promising Sharon’s interpretation of Wagner’s “Ring,” I am planning on doing everything I can to be there. It should be a spectacular moment in the cultural life of New York City, one I am very excited to see. Now, to do my homework as soon as I can…
This book is perfect for imagining as an opera, an unparalleled contemporary work of choral storytelling. Let’s see what happens!
James! So excited for you!!
Which, I have not had the privilege of going back to Detroit to see his work.... yet.
Let’s be clear and state the obvious: Wagner was a horrific antisemite and his works were appropriated by the Nazis as exemplars of the greatest achievements of German art which, it turns out, they are. So, do we let antisemites and Nazis define and negate art for us? The book does an incredible job of exploring this problem in hundreds of pages that I am unable to properly capture here.
Is there a more conservative audience than opera lovers? A quick look at the comments on this YouTube video about “La Boheme In Reverse” is only a small taste, and nothing compared to what Wagnerian purists can bring down on a modern production they don’t like.
It must also be said that Yuval Sharon is a Jewish American with Israeli parents, a fact seemingly ignored as being meaningful to his decision to stage Wagner operas, but it has to be said that of all the Wagner pieces Sharon will be directing at The Met, he is not directing their production of Parsifal, which is the subject of scholarly discussion about its relationship to Christian antisemitism. I am incredibly interested to see how Sharon addresses this in his stagings of the works he will be directing (if at all), and how this conversation will be framed (if at all). Maybe scholars are past this debate, but current events say otherwise— it seems highly significant at this moment in time that Sharon’s interpretation will be shaping the conversation around Wagner.
Turandot and Orfeo ed Euridice, which featured an unbelievable performance by the countertenor Anthony Ross Costanzo, who is incredible.