One Last Trip Through the Time Tunnel

The decade leading up to Wagner’s bicentenary witnessed a notable surge in new productions of the Ring; and the higher the profile, it seemed, the greater the controversy, with Robert Lepage’s Met production generating as many articles about the infamous machine as about the singing, and Bayreuth audiences greeting director Frank Castorf with over ten minutes of sustained booing. If Berlin’s Deutsche Oper declined to hop on the new Ring bandwagon, it may simply have been because the production currently mothballed in their storage locker – Götz Friedrich’s now legendary ‘time tunnel’ staging – deserved one final moment in the spotlight. Thus, as part of their Wagner celebrations – which also included a new Parsifal and revivals of all the other major operas – the Deutsche Oper presented Berlin audiences with two complete Ring cycles, the…