{"id":581970,"date":"2026-08-03T15:31:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T15:31:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/581970\/"},"modified":"2026-08-03T15:31:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T15:31:10","slug":"ring-cycle-review-ai-staging-dispenses-with-drama-to-create-banal-bric-a-brac-opera","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/581970\/","title":{"rendered":"Ring Cycle review \u2013 AI staging dispenses with drama to create banal bric-a-brac | Opera"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unveiled the same week in which tech company Anthropic admitted that its AI model Claude had gone rogue during testing<\/a>, Bayreuth festival\u2019s new AI-generated staging of Wagner\u2019s four-part Ring of the Nibelungen<\/a> is at least timely. But anyone who assumes that the cycle\u2019s obsession with knowledge, power and possession might make it an ideal forum for reflection on AI as a major contemporary frontier will be disappointed, as will anyone hopeful about AI\u2019s creative potential within opera.<\/p>\n

Commissioned to mark the festival\u2019s 150th anniversary, the production is \u201ccurated\u201d \u2013 emphatically not \u201cdirected\u201d \u2013 by a team led by German stage director Marcus Lobbes<\/a>. He apparently spent weeks in dialogue with AI models about possible interpretations of the Ring. According to the programme book, \u201cpower structures, capitalism, mythology, gender roles, nationalism\u201d, all came up. So far, so mainstream Wagner reception. But if these human-machine exchanges were revelatory, you wouldn\u2019t know it from the resulting staging, which uses AI \u201cas an extension of a cultural memory that is never complete\u201d.<\/p>\n

In plainer English: the AI system is allowed to roam archival materials from 150 years of Ring cycle productions at Bayreuth as the starting point for constantly spooling visuals projected on to a screen that is stretched the full width and height of the proscenium arch. Lobbes also asked the system to incorporate imagery chronologically, from a political or social event every year of the festival\u2019s history as a plausible conversation topic for that season\u2019s audience. Each scene begins with a source from the cycle\u2019s 1876 premiere, but what happens next is determined by the system in real time during the performance.<\/p>\n

Grotesque \u2026 Bayreuth festival\u2019s 2026 Ring cycle. Photograph: Enrico Nawrath<\/p>\n

The good news is that anyone who attends another of this production\u2019s outings definitely won\u2019t see the same selection of visual bric-\u00e0-brac that I did. The bad news is that the principle of rapid machinic free-association will remain.<\/p>\n

So, I assume, will the constant grotesque morph and flow of visual objects. Das Rheingold and Die Walk\u00fcre involved countless hands that warped horribly, producing extra fingers and nails. (Did someone adjust the settings ahead of Siegfried and G\u00f6tterd\u00e4mmerung, I wonder? The visual tic disappeared mid-cycle as suddenly as it emerged.) Faces appeared, only to go instantly out of focus. Some were very famous (Adolf Hitler, Queen Elizabeth II, JFK) but I struggled to identify most. Watercolour rocks became bodies became other bodies. There were rapid swings between the entirely inscrutable and the totally obvious. Alberich\u2019s transformation into a toad triggered various mutant amphibians, there were bears when Siegfried brought one in, a rainbow for the rainbow bridge to Valhalla.<\/p>\n

double quotation markThe singers stood behind a vast projection screen like budget Star Trek monsters rooted to the spot<\/p>\n

But there were also endless picture-library bland photos of scrap metal, creeping greenery, water droplets, abandoned rooms. I spotted design elements from various past Bayreuth Ring productions but was mostly \u2013 inevitably \u2013 unable to keep pace with the AI system\u2019s connection-making. One low point: the appearance of a historical photo of emaciated African youths \u2013 as unexplained as everything else, but picture the results of an image-search for \u201cEuropean colonialism\u201d \u2013 which flashed past during Die Walk\u00fcre. This is not engaging with the complex, problematic history of Bayreuth or the Ring. It\u2019s just another form of mindless scrolling.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll be wondering where the singers fitted in. Forget Wagner\u2019s notion of the inescapably multimedia Gesamtkunstwerk<\/a>: this Ring presents the sonic and the visual as separate tracks, with theatrical drama kept to a minimum. Over four nights, some of today\u2019s leading Wagnerians stood behind \u2013 yes, behind \u2013 the vast projection screen, all wearing subtle variations on a single costume design like budget Star Trek monsters. Mostly they were rooted to the spot. Recently murdered characters simply walked off; at erotic climaxes, lovers held hands; Siegfried discovered Br\u00fcnnhilde despite being alone on stage.<\/p>\n

Theatrical drama is kept to a minimum \u2026 Bayreuth festival\u2019s AI Ring Cycle. Photograph: Enrico Nawrath<\/p>\n

Michael Volle<\/a> was a magnificent, stately Wotan and Wanderer, his power unforced. Klaus Florian Vogt<\/a> was by turn Loge, Siegmund and Siegfried, in each case supple and darkly luminous with compelling diction. Elza van den Heever<\/a>\u2019s Sieglinde got better and better, blossoming in her love duet in Die Walk\u00fcre. Camilla Nylund<\/a>\u2019s Br\u00fcnnhilde was often wild and sometimes ungainly, but her impassioned lyricism and most intimate moments were deeply moving regardless. Mika Kares<\/a>\u2019s Hunding was all iron and velvet, his Hagen unleashing mighty, smooth torrents of sound \u2013 evil rarely sounds better. Gerhard Siegel<\/a> (Mime) and Jochen Schmeckenbecher (Alberich) were more old-school baddies, respectively wheedling and raw. Peter Rose<\/a> was a rather muddy Fafner and Christa Mayer<\/a> wobbly but forceful as Erda and Waltraute. The Rhinemaidens, Valkyries and Norns were exquisitely balanced and as characterised as they could be without acting.<\/p>\n

double quotation markForget Wagner\u2019s notion of the Gesamtkunstwerk \u2013 this Ring keeps theatrical drama to a minimum<\/p>\n

Conductor Christian Thielemann<\/a> drew playing from the orchestra that was occasionally poorly tuned and even scrappy, but which at its best should have been captivating: details were finely balanced and tutti passages blistering, the brass rising like an immense wave from the pit or splatting nastily for the bad guys. Tempi were often brisk (only in Siegfried did this cause coordination problems, with Vogt left struggling to keep up) but there were also precious moments of spaciousness. Yet even the silence that Thielemann left in Wotan\u2019s devastating monologue couldn\u2019t stop the onscreen hyperactivity that instantly dispersed all dramatic tension.<\/p>\n

There are numerous criticisms you could levy against this production from all manner of perspectives; there is, after all, something for everyone to dislike. But the most dismal was perhaps how unmoving it was \u2013 and how difficult it became to care.<\/p>\n

The Ring Cycle continues at the Bayreuth festival<\/a> until 16 August.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unveiled the same week in which tech company Anthropic admitted that its AI model Claude had gone rogue…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":581971,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,218,219,61,60,80],"class_list":["post-581970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=581970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581970\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/581971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=581970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=581970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=581970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}