Hojotoho! Dallas Symphony Performs Wagner’s “Ring” Cycle

In Thursday’s (10/10) New York Times, Scott Cantrell writes, “Richard Wagner conceived his four-opera ‘Ring’ as a Gesamtkunstwerk: a marriage of poetry and music, for voices and orchestra, with coordinated sets, costumes and action. It’s a huge, expensive challenge even for top opera companies … How much of Wagner’s impact remains if you subtract scenery and costumes, and most of the action—with neither water nor fire, sword nor spear, celestial palace nor subterranean smithy? Those questions will be put to the test by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, which is alone in the American classical music and opera scene this season by presenting a complete ‘Ring,’ over four evenings at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center beginning on Sunday. At the podium will be Fabio Luisi, the orchestra’s music director since 2020, who led the ‘Ring’ at the Metropolitan Opera a dozen years ago. In Dallas, he began to roll out the cycle last spring, presenting ‘Das Rheingold’ and ‘Die Walküre’; ‘Siegfried’ and ‘Götterdämmerung’ followed earlier this month, semi-staged by Alberto Triola … Neither Opera America nor the League of American Orchestras could think of another American symphony orchestra attempting a full ‘Ring.’ But Luisi believes it’s an important experience.”