Met Opera: Das Rheingold
A scene from Wagner's "Das Rheingold." | Photo: Marty Sohl/Metropolitan Opera
Das Rheingold
by Richard Wagner
Wagner’s visionary initial installment of the Ring Cycle depicts the original sin of the theft of the sacred golden treasure, the vanity of the gods, the greed of the Nibelungen, the fratricide of the giants, and the building of Valhalla. Bass-baritone Greer Grimsley sings the role of Wotan, the conflicted lord of the gods. Mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton sings her first Wagner role at the Met as Wotan’s embattled wife, Fricka.
Conceived by Wagner as a prologue to his monumental Ring cycle, this work sets forth the dramatic and theoretical issues that play out in the three subsequent music dramas.
The action of Das Rheingold takes place in mythic locales below and above the earth: the depths of the Rhine, mountaintops, and the caves of the toiling dwarves. The time is an unspecified era before history, where the actions of human beings do not yet affect the universal order of things.
Conductor: Philippe Jordan
Cast:
FREIA: Wendy Bryn Harmer
FRICKA: Jamie Barton
ERDA: Karen Cargill
LOGE: Norbert Ernst
MIME: Gerhard Siegel
WOTAN: Greer Grimsley
ALBERICH: Tomasz Konieczny
FASOLT: Günther Groissböck
FAFNER: Dmitry Belosselskiy
Start time: 10:00am on Capital Public Radio .
Approximate running time 2 hrs 30 min
Click in the "LINKS" area for more information about "Das Rheingold."
The "Ring" cycle continues in Met Opera broadcasts:March 30:
Die Walküre (also live in cinemas) (9am start time)
April 13:
Siegfried (9am)
