Fabio Luisi wanted his Ring Cycle to be heard and not seen.
奥补驳苍别谤鈥檚 鈥淒er Ring des Nibelungen,鈥� approaching the 150th anniversary of its premiere in 1876, has been reinterpreted and deconstructed by directors finding various meanings in the conflicts among gods, humans, giants and dwarfs.
While most new recordings are on video, Luisi led his Dallas Symphony Orchestra in concert performances that were released on 13 compact discs by Delos on May 22 and are available on streaming services.
鈥淲agner conceived this as a total immersion in visual and acoustic, but I could focus really only on the music, and this was the point actually 鈥� not to be distracted by staging and not to have to cope with maybe strange ideas of staging,鈥� Luisi said. 鈥淚 think the music tells everything.鈥�
Luisi became DSO music director in 2020 and broached the idea while dining two years later with Morton H. Meyerson, a longtime board member.
鈥淔abio came back from lunch sort of giddy but sort of sheepishly saying: `Do you think that this would ever be possible?鈥� recalled Kim Noltemy, the Dallas CEO at the time. 鈥淪o, I said, well, let鈥檚 give it a try. So, we called around to see if there were people who wanted to support it and did a budget.鈥�
After securing a waiver from the orchestra allowing for the needed rehearsals and performance length, recordings were made during four concerts from May 1-5 and six more from Oct. 5-20. Each opera was performed two or three times.
Americans in cast fill big roles
American singers featured prominently, with Mark Delavan as Wotan, Lise Lindstrom as Br眉nnhilde and Sara Jakubiak as Sieglinde, part of a cast that included Christopher Ventris (Siegmund), Daniel Johansson (Siegfried), Deniz Uzun (Fricka), T贸mas T贸masson (Alberich), Michael Laurenz (Mime) and Stephen Milling (Hagen).
Delavan sang Wotan at New York鈥檚 Metropolitan Opera in 2013 after Luisi took over from an ailing James Levine in Robert Lepage鈥檚 much-maligned production staged on a 45-ton set of 24 rotating planks.
鈥淲e鈥檙e accessible and they know that we鈥檙e hungry and we have a chip on our shoulders,鈥� Delavan said. 鈥淲hat conductors like about American singers is their technique is sound. Even a European conductor would say: Well, I鈥檓 going to give up some of the communication skills, only one degree of separation with the language, but I鈥檓 going to get a solid technique, and I鈥檓 going to get pretty good acting chops.鈥�
Lindstrom has been in Atlanta to sing in its production of 鈥淕枚tterd盲mmerung,鈥� the concluding night of the tetralogy, leading to what is being billed as the first complete Ring Cycles in the America South in 2029.
鈥淭he wonderful thing about it is the intimacy between the orchestra and us, because we鈥檙e not separated by a chunk of stage or a chunk a scenery or a chunk of concept,鈥� she said of the Dallas performances. 鈥淎nd for people like me, who have had the opportunity to perform the role before, I have all those iterations to rely on for my portrayal that I can sort of filter myself through.鈥�
A younger Luisi listened to famous renditions
Luisi, 67, first heard a Ring recording in Georg Solti鈥檚 famous studio set with the Vienna Philharmonic from 1958-65. He also admires Karl B枚hm鈥檚 live recording from the 1967 Bayreuth Festival and Marek Janowski鈥檚 1980-83 studio version with the Staatskapelle Dresden.
He first conducted Ring when he was music director of Dresden鈥檚 Semperoper from 2007-10. Luisi鈥檚 Dallas performances include more legato and softer sound than his rendition a decade earlier at the Met. He tries to keep an arc from the first notes of 鈥淒as Rheingold鈥� to the final strains of 鈥淕枚tterd盲mmerung.鈥�
鈥淚 have a deeper understanding about the meaning of this piece,鈥� he said. 鈥淚 consider the ring to be a big Bruckner symphony. So we have the introduction, then we have the first movement, this is 鈥淲alk眉re,鈥� which happens to be a slow movement, and then we have the scherzo, which is 鈥淪iegfried,鈥� of course, and then the long, long, last movement. There is a unity.鈥�
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