Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen is the greatest and most ambitious challenge any opera house can undertake. This timeless musical drama has been interpreted and discussed more than any other operatic work. Wagner’s fourteen-hour opera tetralogy on the dilemmas of power and love had last been performed at the Royal Danish Theatre in 1912, so when the plans for a new opera house in Copenhagen materialised, a staging of the complete Ring cycle seemed to befit the occasion, an undertaking that would define the ambitions of the new opera house. The staging of Der Ring des Nibelungen is beyond comparison the Royal Danish Opera’s greatest artistic endeavour for decades.  That Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen is associated with the inauguration of a new opera house is nothing new. Indeed, this was very much what Wagner had in mind. Not only was the opera tetralogy the lengthiest and most demanding operatic work ever created, it would also require its own opera house! Bayreuth offered a plot of land outside town for the Bayreuth Festival House, which was inaugurated in 1876 with the world premiere of the Ring cycle.  The Royal Danish Theatre’s principal conductor Michael Schønwandt is the first – and currently only – Danish conductor to have mastered the podium in Bayreuth. Along with Artistic Director of the Royal Danish Opera Kasper Beck Holten, who is currently one of Scandinavia’s most talented directors, he had previously headed the Royal Danish Theatre’s staging of Tchaikovsky’s Pique Dame and Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre. Kasper Beck Holten has over many years collaborated with set designers Marie í Dali and Steffen Aarfing and lighting designer Jesper Kongshaug. This therefore seemed the natural team to create the Royal Danish Opera’s new production of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen.  “It is, I suppose, any opera director’s greatest dream and challenge to take on the Ring,” says Kasper Beck Holten. “There the possibilities are so endless in this impassioned, far-reaching drama about the choices people face in life. About the choices that we perhaps later regret, the choices others make for you, and the choices you make without being aware of it before it is too late. And right at the centre of everything there is the most important choice of all; namely, the question of what holds importance for a human. What is to shape our lives and what would we like to be judged on in retrospect?” Top   Print The Music Read about the music; Instruments, singers, recordings etc. Articles about the music The four operas Read more about the four operas: Das Rheingold Die Walküre Siegfried Götterdämmerung Read more about The Ring - a small excerpt of the enormous literature available about The Ring: Lars Ole Bonde, ed.: Rundt om Ringen - veje til Wagners verdensteater. DR Multimedie, 1994 Articles in Danish by e.g. Danish author Villy Sørensen, published to coincide with the performances by the Danish National Opera. Rudolph Sabor: Der Ring des Nibelungen, 4 volumes. Phaidon Press, 1997 Outstanding introduction to The Ring with English translations of the entire libretto and analysis, etc. Deryck Cooke: I Saw the World End – A Study of Wagner’s Ring. Oxford University Press, 1979 One of the most accomplished analysis of Das Rheingold and Die Walküre. Unfortunately, Deryck Cooke passed away before competing chapters on the last two operas of The Ring. Robert Donington: Wagner’s "Ring" and its Symbols. Faber and Faber, 1963 Another classic of literature on The Ring. J.K. Holman: Wagner’s Ring – A Listener’s Companion & Concordance. Amadeus Press, 1996 Extensive and very useful reference book on the characters and terms pertaining to The Ring.