Q & A: Phil Hagen Jungschlaeger on Digital Art & Creative Technology for Bayreuth Festival’s ‘Ring 10010110’

(Photo: Enrico Nawrath) The Bayreuth Festival celebrates its 150th year anniversary of Richard Wagner’s “The Ring” with an experimental concept that embodies an archive of the past designed to usher opera into the future – Artificial Intelligence unleashed. The creative team for this historical project includes artistic and technical concept by Curator Marcus Lobbes and Nils Corte, Digital and AI {…}

Jul 9, 2026

Baltic Opera Festival 2026 Review: Die Walküre

(Photo: Krzysztof Mystkowski/ Baltic Opera Festival) Richard Wagner’s “Die Walküre” unfolds in a world governed by contracts, power structures, and inherited systems of control. Yet beneath its mythological surface lies a drama about the moment when those systems begin to fail. In John Fulljames’s production, presented at the Forest Opera in Sopot as a co-production of the Royal Danish Theatre {…}

Jul 4, 2026

CD Review: Delos’s ‘Der Ring des Nibelungen’

Clément Guérard–aka Clym–stated in his audiophile guide to Wagner that “there is no war of the Rings.” What he meant was that each recording stands as a supreme achievement of its own—irrespective of personal taste, conviction, philosophical leaning, or otherwise. It is a generous form of agnosticism that spares its practitioner the ire of the ever-furious Wagnerian. So be it; {…}

May 24, 2026

The Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb 2025–26 Review: Tannhäuser

(Photo credit: Mara Bratoš / HNK Zagreb) According to a diary entry by Richard Wagner’s wife Cosima, in January 1883 – three weeks before his death – the composer thought he still owed his “Tannhäuser” to the world. To his mind, this “große romantische Oper,” first performed in Dresden in 1845, had never acquired a definitive form. The Croatian National {…}

May 21, 2026

Shaumet Music 2026 Review: Das Rheingold (Dove/Vick)

(Photo: Cassandra Hannagan) Is it possible to reduce the scale of Wagner’s mammoth operas? A “yes” answer clearly underlies Jonathan Dove and Graham Vick’s digest of “The Ring,” Wagner’s four-opera epic. Let’s face it, Wagner’s “Ring” in its original form is nothing less than an account of the unbalancing of the world and the efforts over a series of long {…}

May 14, 2026

Opéra de Marseille 2025-26 Review: Das Rheingold

(Photo: © Camille Rovera/Opéra de Marseille) The Opéra de Marseille’s new production of Wagner’s “Das Rheingold” marks the first staging of one of the Ring operas in France’s second-largest city since 1996. Its success augurs well for the tenure of the company’s talented young music director, Michele Spotti. Gold, Power and the Rheinbank Charles Roubaud’s staging is modern yet eminently {…}

Apr 14, 2026

Royal Ballet & Opera 2025-26 Review: Siegfried

(Credit: ©2026 Monika Rittershaus) Despite the numerous positive accounts of Barrie Kosky’s “Siegfried” that gave me hope for a rich and nuanced performance, I found the singing, acting and stage design to be flat, unconvincing and shallow. As a devoted Wagnerite, I do not feel that most of the performers truly understood the vast musical work that they were performing. {…}

Mar 10, 2026

Teatro Mayor Julio Mario Santo Domingo 2026 Review: The Flying Dutchman

(Photo: Juan Diego Castillo / Teatro Mayor Julio Mario Santo Domingo) When Richard Wagner completed “Der fliegende Holländer” almost two centuries ago, he stood at a threshold in his artistic life. Within its turbulent orchestral sea there is already the sense of the psychological obsessions that would later culminate in “Tristan” and “The Ring.” The work’s themes —eternal wandering, obsessive {…}

Nov 26, 2025

Sydney Symphony Orchestra 2025 Review: Siegfried

(Photo credit: Daniel Boud) At the end of Act one of the Sydney Symphony’s “Siegfried,” on November 13th at the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall, one may have sensed from the onstage performers’ elation that Simon O’Neill as Siegfried, Gerhard Siegel as Mime, and conductor Simone Young knew they had nailed it. The audience’s applause was long and enthusiastic. A {…}

Oct 10, 2025

Deutsche Oper Berlin 2025-26 Review: Lohengrin

(Photos: © Marcus Lieberenz / Bettina Stöß) The plot of “Lohengrin” is drawn from medieval German literature, a tale of chivalric values set in tenth-century Northern Germany. In this production, the stage during the prelude presents the aftermath of a battle, with corpses scattered across the scene and a comet—possibly Halley’s, which passed in 913 AD—brightening the night sky. Director {…}

Jul 9, 2025

Teatro alla Scala 2024-25 Review: Siegfried

(Photo Credit: Brescia e Amisano ©) This “Siegfried”… a popular musical in myth? Given the audience’s warmly animated reactions, as one witnessed upon attending various performances of its run, it would appear so. The lively, evocative melodic themes in this, the third of four operas of “Der Ring des Nibelungen,” are sustained by all the symbolic ingredients of a fairy {…}