RING 10010110 • BAYREUTH
★★★☆☆☆
Photo: Enrico Nawrath
REVIEW OF WAGNER’S “THE RING”: A SPECTACULAR BAYREUTH FLOP MAY BE A GLIMPSE INTO THE FUTURE.
The intention is strong and incredibly bold. For its 150th anniversary, the Bayreuth Festival has chosen to reinvent the past and take a bold step into a technology that may very well become part of the performing arts of the future. The failure is total. And yet.
The festival has produced a complete version of Wagner’s *Ring* in a sort of semi-concertante staging, in which the set design is entrusted to artificial intelligence. An AI system has been trained on material from 150 years of Bayreuth history and continuously composes and transforms images during the performance.
Photo: Enrico Nawrath
A visual dimension that is constantly changing, expanding, and reconfiguring itself in a rich flow of giant-scale visuals.
The images are created and rendered in real time. What happens after the opening image of each act is not predetermined frame by frame. However, it is not an AI that freely improvises the entire scenography without guidance. The output is generated live within a controlled system. The material, models, and framework are curated by the artistic team.
Keep the word “curated” in mind. There is, in fact, no director who has made a conceptual decision that gives these colorful, abstract sequences meaning.
Little by little, it begins to resemble an amateur exhibition of abstract kitsch. Plenty of visual impact, at times stunningly beautiful, but often lacking dramatic substance. One watches the performance feeling slightly dazed rather than captivated by Wagner’s drama.
Photo: Enrico Nawrath
A star-studded cast of singers moves about in kitschy, patchwork-like clichés of traditional Wagner costumes behind a transparent screen that covers the entire stage. Here, Wagner is drowned out by a visual tidal wave of proportions I have never seen the likes of in an opera.
Organic structures morph into impressionistic landscapes; fantasy universes give way to cosmic visions. Rock formations, nebulae, steel chains, monsters, architectural fantasies, rainbows, and dreamlike interpretations of power, fear, and dominance pour forth in a relentless barrage of images.
It’s impressive, hypnotic, and deeply fascinating. An experience that might have been better suited to the Venice Biennale. It will never be great theater.
Opera is a live art form, so the idea that the set design can also be a dynamic and unpredictable element isn’t crazy at all. On the contrary, the idea feels both obvious and forward-thinking. The problem is that the spectacular visuals never really translate into drama.
Photo: Enrico Nawrath
As impressive as many of the visions are, the work fails to establish a genuine narrative grip on the material. Over time, the associative stream of images becomes more noise than narrative. One misses an artistic vision that dares to insist on a specific interpretation of the work and gives the audience something to respond to—something to agree with or disagree with.
When no one really takes responsibility for the interpretation, a void arises. The technical solution is fabulous, but over time the images lose their direction and meaning.
Photo: Enrico Nawrath
Wagner breaks the record for length, and even the most successful productions struggle to maintain the suspense throughout four operas and nearly twenty hours of musical drama, including intermissions. Here, the endless stream of imagery ends up working against itself. What at first seems overwhelming and fascinating begins to feel haphazard.
AI scenography is a cool buzzword, but in practice, the experience is similar to the massive video productions that many rock bands use in their arena shows. The visuals illustrate, support, and amplify the emotions. But why does Bayreuth’s version have to be live-generated, anyway? Just for the hype?
The images could just as easily have been pre-produced as part of a creative process, with or without the help of artificial intelligence. Perhaps that would have resulted in a sharper cut.
The production has received some of the harshest criticism I’ve seen in a long time in the international opera press. The anniversary production of *Der Ring* has been savaged, lambasted, mocked, and scandalized with an almost gleeful enthusiasm.
Photo: Enrico Nawrath
In *The Guardian*, the production is described as a mindless jumble of images, in which the AI projections overshadow any actual dramatic development. Other reviewers have called it an “endless slideshow,” and critic Mark Berry went a step further, describing it as “the worst production of anything I’ve ever seen.”
At the premiere, the production team was met with boos, whistles, and even projectiles, I was told by an eyewitness in the front row. With this production, Bayreuth has suffered one of the most severe collective rebukes the festival has experienced in many years.
Perhaps that’s part of the point. Bayreuth has always been the place where Wagner is reinvented. History is full of productions that were ridiculed at their premieres only to be elevated to the status of modern classics.
The music? With a cast featuring a truly brilliant Michael Volle as Wotan, Camilla Nylund as Brünnhilde, and Klaus Florian Vogt as Siegfried, we’re flying first class.
Conductor Christian Thielemann took the helm as the Captain, and when the curtain fell, he received applause of a magnitude rarely witnessed, even in Bayreuth. I have scarcely ever heard *The Ring* performed with greater power, precision, elegance, or artistry than here.
With such a strong musical foundation, it is especially bold of the festival organizers to build such a controversial production on top of it. It would have been much easier to stage a traditional anniversary production of *The Ring* and send the audience home with exactly what they expected.
Photo: Enrico Nawrath
But there are already plenty of outstanding, more traditional staged productions of the *Ring* cycle. Right now, you can see notable productions in London (Barrie Kosky), Paris (Calixto Bieto), and Munich (Tobias Kratzer).
Bayreuth chose instead to experiment. It was only partially successful. But enough that one cannot dismiss it. On the contrary, I am left with the feeling that in five years we will look back on this much-maligned production as a first step—not the one that found the solution, but the one that started the wave.
AI is a powerful artistic tool and will undoubtedly become part of the future of opera, just as projected backdrops, video, and digital technologies have long since taken the stage by storm. But AI is a tool that must not be confused with a director’s vision.
I’ll give it three stars. AI-Ringen is bad in many ways, but its spirit is genuine. Truly interesting missteps are rare.
