Wagner’s Ring at Zurich Opera

Accentus Music will be producing R. Wagner’s Ring Cycle at Zurich Opera House in May 2024, staged by artistic director Andreas Homoki.

Just a stroll from where Wagner composed Rheingold, Die Walküre, and the first two acts of Siegfried from 1853 to 1857, Zurich Opera stages its first Ring des Nibelungen in over 20 years.

“The Ring comes back to its source,” Homoki says. Shorn from thematic concepts that have multiplied over the past half-century, Homoki’s staging relies heavily on the characters’ personalities – and what the singers bring to the roles. He decided to take Richard Wagner's tetralogy back to the time of its creation. "You have to make up your mind before you even have the image in mind on how you organize the various levels in the piece – the gods, the family of Wotan, and a slightly alien figure of fire; the giants; and the Nibelung. It’s a world without humans, though the gods are a metaphor for human spirit – when a human begins to speak and think, he creates gods, to explain to himself why he is different from nature, and of course he starts to destroy nature quite rapidly and with consequences."

"It’s been very inspiring and enriching," says Gianandrea Noseda, who became the Zurich Opera’s music director in 2021. "Just the fact that the idea of the Ring was born in this city makes it more meaningful." For Noseda, "the tragedy of the pandemic gave me the time to really get deep inside all the ideas of the Ring."

Dates of the Complete Ring Cycle
Das Rheingold: 18 May 2024
Die Walküre: 20 May 2024
Siegfried: 24 May 2024
Götterdämmerung: 26 May 2024

A 4K HDR Production of Accentus Music and Opernhaus Zürich.