Reflections on SFO's 2018 RING: The Production

Before discussing the visuals of the San Francisco Opera's 2018 RING cycle, it helps to think about how far costume and set design have evolved since the premiere of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen in 1876. Compare these two costume designs by Carl Emil Doepler (one for Wotan and the other for one of his Valkyrie daughters) with Catherine Zuber's costumes for the San Francisco RING.

Costume design by Carl Emil Doepler for Wotan (1876)

Greer Grimsley (Wotan) and Iréne Theorin (Brunnhilde)
in Act III of Die Walkure (Photo by: Cory Weaver)

Costume design by Carl Emil Doepler for a Valkyrie (1876)

Iréne Theorin as Brunnhilde in Act II of Die Walkure
(Photo by: Cory Weaver)

When I started attending performances of Das Rheingold and Die Walkure in the 1960s, the Metropolitan Opera was in the process of mounting a new RING production designed by Gunther Schneider-Siemssen. While the size of the production in the new Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center was impressive, this was a period when productions of Wagnerian operas in the United States were often performed on a raked platform located between a painted backdrop (upstage) and a scrim (downstage) with some occasional styrofoam rocks as added scenic elements. When I attended the Seattle Opera's production of the RING in 1977, costumes and sets were inspired by Arthur Rackham's famous illustrations of characters from the RING.

Arthur Rackham's painting of the Valkyries

Brandon Jovanovich (Siegmund) and Karita Mattila (Sieglinde)
sing their final love duet beneath an elevated highway in
Act II, Scene 2 of Die Walkure (Photo by: Cory Weaver) 

In the decades since artistic planning began for San Francisco's 1985 and 2011 RING productions, astonishing changes have occurred in computer technology and pyrotechnics which impact every contemporary staging of the RING.

• No longer must an audience stare at a black scrim during one of Wagner's musical bridges.
• No longer is a set designer limited to using a collection of styrofoam rocks and a simple lighting board.
• No longer must an audience be subjected to Supertitles which offer a stodgy, outdated translation of Wagner's text.
• No longer is a "magic fire" simulated with cloth ribbons and a fan when far more spectacular stage effects can be delivered through a rip-roaring combination of animation and real fire.

Brunnehilde is surrounded by a magic ring of fire in
Act III, Scene 2 of Die Walkure (Photo by: Cory Weaver)

To begin an appreciation of what makes San Francisco's 2018 RING so special, suppose we step back and recall what Wagnerian performance styles used to look like. In many productions, singers would plant their feet firmly on the stage floor, fix their gaze on the prompter (or conductor), and proceed to honk it out. Clad in costumes ranging from "symbolic yet clumsy" to "wildly artistic but downright dangerous," it was often difficult for performers to navigate their way around steeply raked stages.

Many Wagnerian singers learned how to pose and posture onstage without really relating to their colleagues in what was sarcastically described as the "park and bark" style. A famous story about rehearsals for the Met's 1967 production of Die Walkure relates that, after complaining about how darkly the stage was lit (and how difficult it was for her to see conductor Herbert von Karajan through the scrim), soprano Birgit Nilsson appeared wearing a miner's helmet equipped with a head lamp.

Over the next 40 years, all kinds of interpretations of the RING surfaced in European opera houses. In 1987, following a RING cycle in Seattle, I attended the Danish National Opera's RING in a 1,500-seat theatre in the port city of Aarhus. Although I had been assured that the production would be using Supertitles, no one told me that the Supertitles would be written in Danish! In my review of that challenging production I wrote:

"Before any music was even heard from the pit, Das Rheingold began with an elderly Erda, dressed in Victorian garb, stomping through a brilliantly backlit cunt-shaped opening and making her way through a downstage trapdoor. The long, flowing train of her black silk dress (symbolizing, no doubt, the onset of the Earth Mother's menses) followed her into the depths of the Rhine, where the cherished gold was first seen as a naked blond stud flashing lots of dick and asscheek at the audience as the Rhinemaidens kept pawing his athletic young body. Loge made his entrance on a skateboard and later (when he and Wotan descended into the depths of the Earth to confront Alberich) found Mime waving a red Socialist flag over the oppressed workers of Nibelheim!"

Daniel Brenna (Siegfried) and David Cangelosi (Mime)
in Act I of Siegfried (Photo by: Cory Weaver)

Some directors prefer to take a more down-to-earth approach to staging the RING. “In the summer of 1981, I climbed to the top of Red Rocks, a vast outdoor arena at the foot of the Rocky Mountains near Denver. It is an awe-inspiring landscape where you can imagine gods and goddesses roaming just out of sight. Time appears to slow down as if, at any moment, the earth goddess Erda herself will ascend from the rocky soil," recounts director Francesca Zambello. "That view called to mind the untouched world at the beginning of Richard Wagner’s cycle and I began to see in that landscape an American parallel to Wagner’s story.”

An aerial shot of the Red Rocks Amphitheatre
(Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

A photo taken at the top of the Red Rocks Amphitheatre
(Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

The Heymont family visiting Red Rocks in July 1958

An evening performance at the Red Rocks amphitheatre
(Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

While many stage directors have come up with interesting gimmicks for the RING, few have demonstrated a coherent artistic vision that they could clearly communicate to the audience. Throughout her career, Zambello has shown a gift for storytelling that clears a lot of unnecessary wreckage from the music's path and gives audience simple, clear cues that will help them follow plot and character developments. Working with set designer Michael Yeargan, lighting designer Mark McCullough, and projection designers Jan Hartley and S. Katy Tucker, she has found numerous ways to trick the audience's perceptions of time and space.


Not only is this RING a classic case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts, Zambello's distinctly American approach to the RING takes a great work of 19th century art and transforms it into a great work of 21st century art. Had Wagner been able to experience this production, I'm pretty sure the composer would have been shocked and awed by its cinematic strengths. A clever use of projections makes the audience feel as if it is watching an IMAX movie (camera angles are not always horizontal and, at critical moments, the speed of the projections can be adjusted for dramatic effect).

• During Das Rheingold's introductory underwater moments, the audience almost feels as if it is seeing the river bed through the eyes of a fish.
• The trip from Valhalla to Nibelheim and back is handled with numerous projections that bring the same thrilling dynamic to Wagner's opera as the hallucinatory animation at the end of Stanley Kubrick's 1968 science fiction fantasy, 2001: A Space Odyssey.
• The opening moments of Die Walkure look as if they were shot with a GoPro camera strapped to a wounded animal staggering through a redwood forest (which, in some ways, is exactly how Siegmund feels). In Act II, just before Siegmund and Hunding meet their deaths, two Belgian shephards (named Finn and Fubar) race across the stage, looking very much like wolves.
• For some of the airborne sequences during musical bridges, the audience views an endless panorama of clouds (similar to what one sees when looking out the window of an airplane) projected on a scrim. The camera's tendency to roll toward a diagonal or swoop down at an angle makes it feel as if the action is being viewed through the eyes of a large hawk.
• Often, projections against a backdrop add a tremendous sense of movement and impending danger as storm clouds gather and grow increasingly ominous. Sudden bursts of lightning flash across the sky; sparks fly from the power cables linking electrical towers in an industrial landscape.

Whether the audience is watching scenes of freshly cut logs floating down a river, aerial views of the resulting deforestation, industrial smokestacks belching steam into the environment, abandoned factories stained with chemicals and tagged with graffiti, or following a set of railroad tracks, the cumulative impact is stunning. The dialogue-heavy first act of Siegfried (which lasts for 78 minutes) feels as if it has barely taken up 45 minutes of the audience's time. As Zambello explains:

“When we first began production on the RING in Washington, D.C. in 2005, the focus was on the misuse of power. Then we brought it to San Francisco for the first complete cycle in 2011. It is fitting that California plays a strong role in where our cycle starts. The western shore is our last chance for reinvention, where we can no longer ignore the havoc left in our wake. As the curtain rises, you see an untouched landscape. Then the glistening world sickens, darkens, and decays. The Norns live inside a computer, attached to the motherboard by bundles of cables. The only visible sign of nature is a slowly dying tree in Gibichung Hall.”

“Californians have a keen awareness of nature and the environment, so we began to shift the emphasis toward the despoliation of our natural resources. What major river in the United States has not been exploited like the Rhine? Think of the Wagnerian catastrophes of Los Alamos, Three Mile Island, the BP oil spill, and Flint, Michigan. Now a long-term trend of increasing temperatures threatens to permanently transform the Earth’s climate. At the end, the fire surrounding Brünnhilde has a greenish tinge suggesting chemical combustion. We are left hoping that the world might be reborn through her suicide. When the curtain falls, the world is devoid of any living natural resource, destroyed by our own making. How do we rebuild our environment with no Brünnhilde to rescue us?”

Iréne Theorin (Brunnehilde) sings the Immolation Scene at the
end of Gotterdammerung to end Der Ring des Nibelungen
(Photo by: Cory Weaver)

Zambello has always had a particular knack for coaxing singers to use body language as a way of adding depth to their characters. In addition to carefully using certain props to help move the story along, remarkably simple touches help to clarify the RING's complicated plot line.

• Loge normally makes his entrance midway through Scene 2 of Das Rheingold. However, at the end of Scene 1, Zambello has Loge make a brief appearance upstage that shows him witnessing Alberich's theft of the gold from the Rhinemaidens (this subsequently helps Loge explain to Wotan how he knows about the Ring's magical powers).
• The scene in Act II of Siegfried between the hero and the dying Fafner becomes remarkably poignant as Siegfried seeks to learn about his parents.
• In the final moments of Gotterdammerung, instead of dragging Hagen underwater, one of the Rhinemaidens suffocates him with a plastic garbage bag.

Woglinde (Stacey Tappan), Flosshilde (Renée Tatum), and Wellgunde
(Laura McNeese) look decidedly worse for wear in the final
moments of Gottterdammerung (Photo by: Cory Weaver)

This is also, without doubt, the most vertically-oriented RING I've ever seen. Nearly every scene has a variety of playing levels at different heights, which allow singers to interact with their colleagues in a dramatically clear give-and-take dynamic. Entrances don't merely come from the wings (or up several stairs at the center rear of a raked stage).

• Fasolt and Fafner are lowered from the flies to the stage floor on a suspended scaffold.
• Wotan and Loge descend a spiral staircase to reach Nibelheim. 
• During the love duet in Act I of Die Walkure, the walls of Hunding's cabin in the woods break away and a full moon slowly rises in the background.

A giant moon rises over Hunding's cabin during Act I of
Die Walkure (Photo by: Cory Weaver) 

• Instead of taking place on a rocky mountainside, Act II of Die Walkure begins in a corporate boardroom high atop a skyscraper with a panoramic view of a harbor in the distance. In Act II, Scene 2, Fricka looks down from an elevated highway as Siegmund and Hunding perish. In Act III, the Valkyries soar across the stage on a diagonal line as they carry dead heroes to Valhalla.
• When Siegfried slays Fafner, the dragon turns out to be a giant Transformers-style mechanical monster (which allows Siegfried to climb into the cab where Fafner had been at the controls). The device is actually a two-ton, 16-foot long, 12.5-foot tall, and 12.5-foot wide vehicle that resembles a scrap-metal compactor. A stagehand located in the lower cab drives the vehicle and operates its claws while, as Fafner, Raymond Aceto sits in the upper part of the cab.
• In the final moments of Das Rheingold, the audience witnesses the Gods climbing a steep gangway during the "Entry of the Gods Into Valhalla," dressed as if they are about to embark on the maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic (the arrogance that inspires the construction of massive projects like Valhalla and the Titanic is contagious). Note the resemblance between the boarding process in James Cameron's 1997 film, Titanic (starting at the 2:10 point in the video) and the set for the 2018 RING. As the Gods disappear into the wings, the gangway is raised from the stage floor, making Wotan's hubris clear. Left behind, the Rhinemaidens seem to wither as they realize they have failed to rescue the gold.

Brandon Jovanovich (Froh), Julie Adams (Freia), Brian Mulligan
(Donner), and Jamie Barton (Fricka) in the finale to Das Rheingold
(Photo by: Cory Weaver)

The finale of Das Rheingold (Photo by: Cory Weaver)

• Brunnhilde's rock is surrounded by steps and ramps heading in two directions.
• In the first scene of Gotterdammerung, the Norns exist within a giant computer, with a projection of its circuit board filling the background. When the cables break, sparks fly from the circuit board.
• The Great Hall of the Gibichungs has multiple playing levels.
• During the hunting scene where Hagen kills Siegfried, two lookouts are perched on tall tripod deer stands ordered from a hunting catalog.

Daniel Brenna as Siegfried in Gotterdammerung
(Photo by: Cory Weaver)

With some key technological advances in stagecraft having occurred since this production was seen in San Francisco in 2011 and Washington, D.C. in 2016, some adjustments were to be expected.

• Thanks to recent advances in computer technology, Zambello's phenomenal integration of projections allowed her to supplement Wagner's musical leitmotifs with her own set of visual light cues (many of the projections for Das Rheingold and Gotterdammerung have been revised to stress the production's emphasis of images of nature).
• There is a quick set change between the first and second scenes in Act III of Gotterdammerung which must be accomplished within 80 seconds. During this brief pause, the plastic bottles littering the "Rhine" are collected by several dozen stagehands who collect these pieces of  "garbage" as well as the nets enclosing several piles of bottles.
• The images of fallen heroes carried by the Valkyries are taken from photos of American soldiers killed in action during the Civil War, World Wars I and II, and the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The inspiration for Act III's set design was also battle-driven. As Zambello explains: "The world of the Gods always feels like a war zone. When we were doing our initial research, the proximity of the battlements in the Presidio as well as the Marin Headlands spoke to us. They are a very suggestive piece of history that are of our past, present, and future."

The Valkyries hold images of fallen American soldiers
during Act III of Die Walkure (Photo by: Cory Weaver)

• The high-wattage incandescent bulbs in the 2011 stage floor have been replaced by more energy-efficient LED lighting that requires 122 amperes instead of 400. Because the LEDs can be computerized in order to coordinate their use with other lighting elements, this allows the production's stage floor to join its walls and backdrop as available surfaces for projected images.
• The 2018 RING used 2,793 slides for projecting Supertitles, 521 lighting cues involving 781 light instruments, and 26 53-foot-long trucks to transport the production. Recording audio and video for each cycle required 14 terabytes of data.

Originally planned as a co-production between the Washington National Opera and the San Francisco Opera, Das Rheingold was unveiled at the Kennedy Center in 2006, followed by Die Walkure in 2007 and Siegfried in 2009. Das Rheingold was staged by the San Francisco Opera in 2008, followed by Die Walkure in 2010. Four cycles of the complete RING were presented in San Francisco in mid-2011 (the first time the production had been staged in its entirety). Having recovered from a financial crisis caused by the Great Recession of 2008 (which forced the Washington National Opera to postpone its plans for a RING festival), the company mounted three full RING cycles in May of 2016. As I write this piece, the San Francisco Opera has wrapped up a performance run of three more RING cycles in June of 2018.

"Every time we revisit this production there is a change in technology which has helped the visual landscape, stresses Zambello. “Many of the projections in Das Rheingold are new. We went back to the notion of nature as the purest state and incorporated it in the imagery for this scene. Since water is the most important element running through the RING, we had to be clear about its role from the beginning. Because we wanted to change the start to focus more on the purity of nature, we now begin with an image of a molecule that slowly expands to create water. That way, the whole projection narrative in Rheingold is changed to reflect water throughout the first scene. Other images that have changed throughout the cycle are subtle (we tried to incorporate more nature so that, as the universe is destroyed, we see the annihilation of the natural world in sharper contrast). The importance of water returns at the very end of the RING cycle as the world is washed and born anew when the water stops the fires and cleanses the earth.”

The finale to Gotterdammerung (Photo by: Cory Weaver)

As I chatted with the woman seated behind me during one intermission, she sighed and said "Unfortunately, this is like watching our very own Gotterdammerung!"