The Ring in Berlin, Part 1: Digital Sunrise

When Guy Cassiers’ Ring cycle first appeared in Berlin, it was billed as a ‘Ring for the twenty-first Century’. If one views the (still young) twenty-first century as a time of great technological development then the designation is not inappropriate. The cycle – a co-production with La Scala which had its first complete Berlin performance as part of the Staatsoper’s 2013 Easter festival – is packed with the kind of high definition video imagery that would have been, if not impossible, then at least considerably more difficult in an age before Photoshop and Final Cut Pro. 

Yet in many ways, the production is something of a throwback. In its finest moments it offers an abstract visual experience, an immersive world of light, texture and mood, distantly but credibly related to the evocative light-painting of Wieland Wagner’s famed Bayreuth…