Tag Archives: holten

The Copenhagen Ring – Die Walküre

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The Copenhagen Ring has been dubbed the feminist Ring with good reason and we’ll come back to that in looking at the relationship between Wotan and Brünnhilde.  It might also be called the drinkers’ Ring.  There’s an astonishing amount of boozing going on.  It was there in Rheingold with Loge’s hangover and Alberich staggering drunkenly after the Rhinemaidens.  It’s back in Die Walküre.  Hunding and Siegmund knock off the best part of a bottle of Bushmill’s Malt (Add a few cigars and this scene would be perfect for Stuart Skelton and Iain Paterson), Wotan has a flask in his pocket and the Walkyries; Ride is like a sorority party.  Actually it reminds me a lot of Denmark so maybe it just seemed natural.

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The Copenhagen Ring – Das Rheingold

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This 2006 Copenhagen production of Wagner’s Ring has been written about a lot.  It’s been dubbed “the feminist Ring” and a lot has been made of the frequent camera cuts and odd angles.  Actually what struck me most about it was the comparative goriness.  The video direction (by Uffe Borgwandt) didn’t strike me as particularly unusual.  I’d say it was better edited than a typical Halvorson Met broadcast but not so terribly different in spirit.  The main difference is that this is very much presented as a film rather than a documentary record of a live performance.  Oddly it begins very much in live performance mode with footage of the Queen of Denmark taking her seat and of the conductor (Michael Schønwandt) complete with miniatures of his decorations on his tail coat going to the pit.  From then on though we get anything but what the audience in the house saw.

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