The Ring

Janice Baird’s Brünnhilde made Seattle Opera’s “Götterdämmerung” a triumph at the performance I heard on Saturday, August 22nd. Baird captivated the audience with her soaring voice and committed acting. She showered sparks all over the stage when Brünnhilde vainly tried to prove that she was Siegfried’s wife. During those moments Baird’s soprano had an edge [...]

When the curtain goes up at the beginning of Seattle Opera’s production of “Das Rheingold” after the long orchestral introduction, the audience is plunged into the watery world of the mermaids who swim about in the Rhine River.  I experienced this magical moment for the first time during Seattle’s “Ring” in 2005, and – based [...]

If you need to know something about the Ring Cycle, you probably shouldn’t ask Cassidy Brettler. She really doesn’t know anything about Richard Wagner’s masterpiece. If you want to know what will make the Seattle Opera’s staging of the 15-hour-long, four-opera cycle exhilarating, though, she is the perfect person to ask. By the time Seattle [...]

Wednesday night at the Seattle Opera’s first Siegfried of August, Stig Andersen achieved a feat worthy of Wagner’s mythic Siegfried. Just before the curtain came up, Speight Jenkins edged his way onto the stage for an announcement. Stig Andersen, it seems, was plagued by a viral infection that had attacked his voice and sapped his [...]

During the needed break between Valkyrie and tonight’s Siegfried I did what every serious blogger does – work on his blog. I hunkered down in my office, patched together interviews, uploaded content to YouTube, and monitored site traffic. For the weeks and months leading up to the Seattle Opera’s Ring I regularly listened to Wagner. [...]

On night two of the Seattle Opera’s Ring Cycle, I tracked down Jonathan Caves to ask him a few questions about The Valkyrie and his impressions of this particular “green” Ring as it is sometimes called.  We talked before the curtain came up and after Act II.  Caves has lined up his tickets already to [...]

Incomparable in scope, Richard Wagner’s “Der Ring des Nibelungen” is back at McCaw Hall. “Das Rheingold,” the first opera in the tetralogy, opened Sunday night. Before the end of August, three cycles will have been performed to sold-out houses.

My first encounter with this year’s Ring happened in the middle of July. For reasons that are irrelevant, I was sitting across a table from Bob Spano. Spano first conducted the Seattle Ring in 2005 and made such a positive impression that Speight Jenkins invited him back for the 2009 Ring. Here we were, with [...]