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The Jury Is In On Flimm’s ‘Ring’ — And The Verdict Is Good

Bayreuth (dpa) – Director Juergen Flimm has made something possible again: at the Richard Wagner Opera Festival in Bayreuth, the art of theatre has made a comeback.

Flimm’s politically-accented and well-delineated rendering of the epic four-opera “Ring des Nibelungen”, a parable about the struggle for power and supremacy between the gods and Man, was unusually well- received for a first-year production.

The jury is in on this “Millenium Ring” – as the ninth “Ring” production since 1951 had been dubbed – and except for some problems here and there, the verdict is that Flimm, conductor Giuseppe Sinopoli and stage designer Erich Wonder managed the tetralogy very well.

Of course, with the generally conservative Bayreuth opera-going audience, there was also some scattered booing as the curtains closed after the showings of “Rheingold”, “Walkuere”, “Siegfried” and “Goetterdaemmerung” (twilight of the gods).

Critics agree that Flimm has done a tightrope act with this new “Ring”. The long-time head of Hamburg’s Thalia Theatre provokes his audience, but never to the point of making an affront.

The one major positive point in this new production was the good acting performances Flimm gets out of his opera singers. As much as he adheres to the story line, every scene is theatrically composed, carrying Flimm’s signature.

Yet Flimm does not break completely with convention. There are for example such tried and true stage props like Siegfried’s bellows or the Valkyries’ coats of arms.

So the audience didn’t feel itself overly challenged, and could even take it with a sense of slight irony when Flimm inserts other, modern objects into the action: Alberich carrying a plastic shopping bag from the discount “Aldi” store, Hagen’s cohorts holding beer bottles, a small toy dragon on four wheels.

When Wotan, the king of the gods, is shown in a scene where he is operating a document shredder, the audience can’t help but think about the controversy surrounding the disappearance of documents from former Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s office.

But this is more a coincidental political reference, for Flimm never goes radical in this “Ring”, even though the characters are cast in the style of “Global Players” – a term now associated with the likes of the CEOs of multinational corporations.

On the negative side in this new production, the sometimes extremely slow tempo set by conductor Sinopoli – one critic calls him the “slow motion man” – tried the nerves even of his admirers, and Sinopoli got his share of booing.

The biggest weak point, virtually all the critics agree, was Flimm’s rendering of the third opera, “Siegfried” which in places looked unfocused and lacking in drama.

However, the “workshop” principle at work in Bayreuth – in which stagings keep getting refined and the bugs ironed out with each new year that a production runs – should help to improve “Siegfried”.

But despite these few flaws, this year’s Richard Wagner Opera Festival audience is coming away with the verdict that the Flimm/Sinopoli “Ring”, after years of artistic stagnation, has given Bayreuth a powerful push forward.

In short, the audience was treated to something which for years had been in short supply in Bayreuth: exciting and modern drama.

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