Broke: Ugly modern minimalist Wagner staging
Woke: Beautiful old-fashioned Wagner staging
Bespoke: FUTURISTIC PSYCHEDELIC SPACE WAGNER
I have slowly watched the Ring Cycle in the 2008 Valencia production over the last weekends. (It's also on YT, but without subtitles.) First time I watched the whole thing! I wanted something more traditional at first, but I happened upon an excerpt of this version and it just somehow appealed to me, so I watched this instead.
(I still agree with what I said on the topic earlier - if I didn't know anything about the source material, the Nibelungen and Norse mythology, I would have found this staging very confusing.)
Anyway, here's some pictures because it just looks so damn cool. Sorry the quality is not so great. DON'T click to enlarge! Believe me, you'll regret it.
Fricka argues with Wotan:
This is what the inside of a dragon lair looks like:
The scheming nobles / corrupt elite are investment bankers or something. First picture: Gutrune and Gunther. Second picture: Hagen and his men.
Alberich visits his son Hagen:
Brünnhilde in her wedding dress, having the worst day of her life in front of Rhine-waves made from empty plastic bottles:
Mime in his chemistry lab (this must be REALLY confusing to anyone who doesn't know the story - why does he have an isolated chemistry lab in the forest? Originally he's a smith.):
Wotan and Mime talk about giants, which are visualized as battle mechs, I was so delighted!
Wotan, who was intensely dramatic for 16 hours straight:
The wall of fire around Brünnhilde's rock bed:
Gutrune always travels in her personal miniature death star:
And those are the 30 pictures per post that I'm allowed.
