Photo: Bayreuther Festspiele/Enrico Nawrath
When the first complete Der Ring der Nibelungen inaugurated Richard Wagner’s passion project, the Bayreuth Festival Theater, on August 13-17, 1876, the Green Hill quickly became one of the most important socio-cultural pilgrimage sites in Europe. Yet the enormous undertaking was also financially ruinous, as it would take another 20 years for Cosima Wagner to stage the next full Ring. Nowadays, the Festival has largely retained its unique aura, even as high-quality Wagner performances can be found across the globe. But its attempts at innovation have been decidedly mixed. The third and final “Ring 100010110” cycle, unfortunately, was not only a theatrical dud, but if replicated elsewhere, its AI vision risks upending opera as we know it. Almost 150 years to the day after its premiere, the Ring still serves as an ominous warning.
First, the positives. When the Bayreuth Festival reopened in 1951 after World War II, grandsons Wieland and Wolfgang Wagner instituted a “workshop” model. Each new production would be revised year to year, and artistic risks were encouraged. Elements that didn’t quite work out could be fixed, like with this year’s revival of Jay Scheib’s Parsifal, which finally ditched the limited VR glasses. Curator Markus Lobbes sees his Artificial Intelligence-driven Ring “more as a research project than as a finished production. Our project doesn’t aim to provide answers; rather, in the spirit of a laboratory of perception, it seeks to ask questions.” If taken at face value, this is a reasonable statement. The Bayreuth Festival’s experimentation can sometimes work, such as Patrice Chéreau’s groundbreaking 1976 Ring, which was initially panned. Yet this abysmal new version was plagued by the AI’s infantile “perception” and “questions” (I’ll return to this below). If this was indeed a one-off event, the Bayreuth workshop cannot save it. Good riddance.
Audiences were also spoiled by a phenomenal cast (the broadcasts are still available on BR-Klassik). Michael Volle is the finest Wotan of his generation. His Act II monologue in Die Walküre was the most lyrical and lieder-like rendition I have heard, punctuated by an almost interminable pause before proclaiming his wish for “Das Ende.” Volle sustained a sense of pathos in his characterization of the chieftain god, even while physically at his limit during Wotan’s Farewell. Making up for a virtually nonexistent Personenregie, Volle also showed Wotan’s more menacing side when ripping off Alberich’s invisible ring and a sharp “Geh!” to Hunding. Even after three exhausting evenings in the stifling August heat of Bavaria, Volle remained at the top of his game.
Klaus Florian Vogt took on a herculean task never seen before in Bayreuth, performing four major tenor parts in a single cycle as Loge, Siegmund, and both Siegfrieds. However, I was not entirely convinced by his Loge. Here, the trickster god was matter-of-fact in tone and manner, casually plotting the theft of Alberich’s gold and then acting as a restrained mediator between Wotan and the dwarf. Vogt inhabited the Siegmund and the young Siegfried roles more earnestly. His distinctive youthful tone was luminous in “Winterstürme,” with only a brief moment of orchestral disconnect in Act II as Siegmund contemplates his mortality. In Götterdämmerung, Vogt’s staccato Siegfried-as-Gunther came across as somewhat monotone, though he delivered a radiant, aching final “Brünnhilde” with the hero’s dying breath. Most astoundingly, Vogt’s monumental effort sustained a tender lyricism throughout.
Camilla Nylund was also indefatigable as Brünnhilde. This was not the most subtle rendition of the Valkyrie heroine — forceful forti passages and broad vibrato — but Nylund compensated with a powerful voice and stage presence that conveyed defiance. Though Nylund’s voice has lost some of its brightness of earlier years, it still has enough warmth that sustained a timbral assurance across her three performances.
Mika Kares proved his reputation as the definitive Wagnerian villainous bass in his roles as Fasolt, Hunding, and Hagen. His dark tone made Hunding appropriately malevolent. As Hagen, Kares lost a bit of his distinctively biting lower register, lacking enough sanguine color as he called on his Gibichung henchmen. Nevertheless, his towering frame and ease of projection made for memorable performances.
As Fafner, Peter Rose made the most of the poor staging; his offstage groans of the awakened dragon brought out irritation and hostility. Yet his “wilde Wurm” had a lighter side too, as Siegfried comically circles him in a rare moment of onstage action. The Niebelungen were also somewhat unserious, their rivalry more petty than destructive. Jochen Schmeckenbecher and Gerhard Siegel as Alberich and Mime were in top form, though their caricature-like portrayals of the dwarves, all too often the case in Bayreuth performances, did not quite dig deeper into arguably the two most dramaturgically complex characters of Wagner’s Ring. Schmeckenbecher’s Alberich mixed cynicism and spitefulness in his sharp dialogue with Mime, with no sign of paternal love towards Hagen. Siegel’s lower register was noticeably underpowered, but he clearly relished the falsetto, disingenuous pleading to Siegfried with an entertaining charisma.
While Schmeckenbecher and Siegel delivered gusto despite the limited Personenregie, other characters were constrained by the frozen staging to the detriment of their voices. Anna Kissjudit’s Fricka was sadly mismatched when alongside Volle. Kissjudit’s intonation was often flat with an overly wide vibrato, though her amber tone and sharp Sprechstimme-like “Untreue zuchtlose Frucht” gave weight to Fricka’s reprimand of the unfaithful Wotan. Michael Kupfer-Radecky’s Gunther squeezed his low notes with a gritty tone, somewhat overshadowed by Kares. As Sieglinde, Else van den Heever’s wonderfully rounded middle register brought compassion for her brother, but one could rarely comprehend her enunciation as she stood behind the AI-projecting screen that covered the entire stage. Similarly, Victoria Randem as the Waldvogel was unfortunately placed offstage. Randem’s light and crystalline tone could not overcome the distance — as such, the handful of boos were unfair to her and should have been directed at the Regie team.
Photo: Bayreuther Festspiele/Enrico Nawrath
Another revelation was Christa Mayer as Erda and Götterdämmerung’s Waltraute. Mayer’s lucid diction and icy delivery gave depth to Erda’s prophecies and Waltraute’s warnings. Magdalena Hinterdobler’s Gutrune made the most of the static stage direction with a bright tone full of pleading and remorse. As deities in Das Rheingold, Alexander Grassauer (Donner), and Siyabonga Maqungo (Froh), and Evelin Novak (Freia) each gave clear, well-rounded performances.
The large distance between the screen and the front of the stage also affected the ensemble scenes. Both the Rhine maidens (Katharina Konradi, Natalia Skrycka, Marie Henriette Reinhold) and the Valkyries (Martina Welschenbach, Brit-Tone Müllertz, Karis Tucker, Freya Apffelstaedt, Alexandra Ionis, Hinterdobler, Reinhold, Skrycka) had moments of timbral warmth damaged by the acoustically muddying screen, their close harmonies disjointed. The Norns (Kissjudit, Ionis, Hinterdobler) had more tonal clarity and relished the somber nature of their prophetic visions.
It took a while for Christian Thielemann and the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra to warm up, but they unfurled a truly illuminating rendition throughout of Wagner’s 16-hour behemoth. The Rheingold prelude was a bit rugged, and the Descent into Nibelheim’s anvils sounded like a routine day at the dwarf factory, but Thielemann delivered a glorious tone from the low brass in the Entry into Valhalla. Other points revealed textures often missed: the dynamic flares in the opening of Die Walküre illustrated the gusts of rain that batter Hunding’s hut, metallic low strings in Siegfried’s Act II conveyed the lurking Fafner, and legato horns in the Ride of the Valkyries brought a sense of unity among the warrior sisters. An interpretive high point came in Siegfried’s Funeral March, when Thielemann pushed and pulled the orchestra in such a way that foregrounded the music’s tragic heroism.
The men of the Bayreuth Festival Choir, prepared by Thomas Eitler-de Lint, were appropriately sinister in Hagen’s call to arms. Yet, once again, the staging got in the way of singing. The chorus, standing in the back and never illuminated, struggled to come through in the softer moments when they expressed wonder at Siegfried’s tale of the forest birds.
Overall, Thielemann preferred brisk tempi; Act I of Die Walküre clocked in at under an hour while Act III of Götterdämmerung was around 80 minutes. A celebrity figure on the Green Hill, Thielemann and the orchestra received the most applause of the cast.
While the luxury casting and gargantuan musical effort required to successfully pull of a Ring cycle are commendable, the elephant in the theater must now be addressed. It is not dignified to spend time trying to make sense or explain the relevance of every AI-generated frame — nor will I pretend to be an expert on LLMs — but the aesthetic, musical, and even moral function of opera as we know it risks collapsing if the “concept” that was presented at Bayreuth does not provoke some critical reflection.
Lobbes, dramaturg Andri Hardmeier, Roman Senkl’s “digital and AI storytelling,” and Nils Corte and Phil Hagen Jungschlaeger’s “creative code,” together developed a mix of images from past Bayreuth Ring productions, historical events, abstract shapes, and terms found in the libretto. The prompts were then fed into an AI that projected images onto two screens, one at the back of the stage and one in the middle. As mentioned earlier, the singers were restricted to singing behind the front screen on barren stage designed by Wolf Gutjahr. After the first few minutes, I started to wish someone would tear through the screen and come to the front of the stage. For generational talents like Volle and Vogt, this distance was a surmountable challenge, but the staging greatly hindered much of the cast’s ability to project without resorting to barking.
The AI also controlled lighting and tracked singers’ movement through silly pom-pom-like infrared trackers on their heads. Astoundingly, the trackers work best when singers stand still, scuttling any hope for interesting Personenregie. By Götterdämmerung, the cast appeared to have almost revolted against the prohibition against movement: As Hagen, Kares dramatically fell on the ground in the closing bars, though four nights earlier had simply walked off stage as the dead Fasolt. During the first three parts, the merciless AI visuals bombarded the screens during the interludes. Then, curiously, the curtain closed during the Dawn on the Rhine and Siegfried’s Funeral March, despite no actual scene changes to speak of: was this an algorithmic act of clemency? Or did Thielemann finally have enough of this rubbish?
Costumes by Pia Maria Mackert all featured ghastly silver and black feathers, as if Big Bird was run over by a steamroller or spent too long inside a chimney. Though nearly identical, some outfits had larger wings than others; Loge stood out like a Winged Hussar for some reason. In a pre-performance talk, Dr. Sven Friedrich explained that the costumes are not about “individual characters” or “embodiment of roles” but rather their “representation of myth.” What myth they were actually representing is anyone’s guess.
All the AI images looked like they were from a bad model of ChatGPT circa 2023, perhaps a silver-lining given the realistic uncanniness of recent Gemini and Claude models. Each part of the tetralogy started with a still from the 1876 Ring set design. But then things quickly went south, a non-stop evolution of visual noise. This is not what Wagner meant when he defined his music as the “art of transition.” The images were frankly nauseating. Human figures frequently morphed into rocks. Items mentioned in the text sometimes triggered distorted versions of trypophobia-inducing frogs, ghoulish bears, or three-eyed squirrels. The most cringy award probably goes to the end of Siegfried, when a purple-hued couple embraced — like an image you might find on the cover of a smutty novel — and, as the curtain falls, horrifyingly morphed into centaur-like creatures. Frequent images from past Bayreuth productions like Castorf, Dorst, Kupfer, and Chereau made one want to watch any of those instead of witnessing the product curated by Lobbes. In fact, after this, I may never complain about Regietheater again.
The AI is also trained to occasionally display historical images (though altered/hallucinated), often of events that took place the same year as a Ring production. According to Friedrich, these are drawn from an “image pool” and programmed roughly once every six minutes of music. The AI also generates its own prompts within this process, magnifying its own slop (by contrast to the production’s facile historicity, the Richard Wagner Museum’s fascinating temporary exhibit in Wahnfried on the mercenary Wagner Group was a welcome relief during my visit).
First, when AI hallucinates history, it distorts it to a horrifying degree. Of course, directors and composers often take enormous liberties when drawing from the past (Wagner’s Rienzi is a prime example). Granted, artistic license enables exploring themes and ideas largely unencumbered by historical reality. When artists decide to revise or embellish a true story, they should take responsibility for the result. AI, on the other hand, has no accountability for its hallucinations. Programmers can tag certain topics and feed historical images to an LLM in a closed system, but the result on screen still goes through a black box. Indeed, the visual “uniqueness” of each performance was included in its marketing. In a program interview between computer scientist Dr. Sabine Sachweh and Lobbes, Sachweh admits that “responsibility remains human, while processes become increasingly automated and opaque.” Yet when Lobbes characterizes these AI distortions as “daydreaming,” this notion affronts the function of human thought.
Photo: Bayreuther Festspiele/Enrico Nawrath
To give some examples, Rheingold has images up to 1914, Die Walküre up to 1945, Siegfried up to 1989, and Götterdämmerung up to the present. The images the AI selected were mostly historical portraits of political figures. Some were benign or connected to Wagner, including Ludwig II and the Wagner brothers Weiland and Wolfgang. Others were more absurd like Herzl, Lenin (distinct from Castorf’s communist Mount Rushmore also on display), Elizabeth II, and Obama. Other elicited chuckles and groans from the audience, like a 1970s “No Gas Today” poster as Brünhilde triumphantly exclaims “Heil dir, Sonne!”
More troubling were hallucinated versions of real historical tragedy and violence. Rheingold alone included political cartoons from the 1884 Berlin Conference with the European colonial powers carving up the “cake” of Africa, the antisemitic Dreyfus Affair, and the Herero genocide. Later, images of Hitler in Paris, the Yalta Conference, the 1972 Munich Massacre, 9/11, and the War in Ukraine also appeared. As expected, these were all presented completely at odds with the music, including a strange mashup of Communist/Fascist/Christian nationalist symbols during the Magic Fire Music. Is Siegfried thus a totalitarian Übermensch? Is Loge and Wotan’s theft of the ring “Durch Raub!” equivalent to colonial looting? Or, when Hagen’s return after murdering Siegfried featured an image of the US Capitol on January 6, could one comment on contemporary political violence? These might have been interesting themes to explore further, rather than programmed coincidences and hallucinations.
AI-generated imagery is pervasive around the festival grounds and the town itself: from Richard’s Spritz Lounge with the composer holding an Aperol, to goofy pictures of Wagner conducting or getting a haircut in shop windows, to the diorama above of the stage at the Festival’s opening Beethoven 9 performance. This Ring was billed as a one-off, budget friendly commemoration for Bayreuth’s 150th anniversary, but the experience left me wondering about the broader social and cultural ubiquity of AI.
While walking to a charming little beer garden during intermissions and seeing the sickly yellow trees from record-breaking heatwaves, it also made me think: what was the environmental cost of running such huge algorithms? Across all industries, AI is being marketed as a cost-effective and cheap future-oriented technology, but it works best when enhancing the existing labor force, not replacing it. Opera houses should clearly not swap directors for AI.
At the end of Götterdämmerung, Wagner notes that as Valhalla burns, “from the ruins of the fallen hall, the men and women, in great agitation, look on the growing firelight.” Though unlikely, perhaps this was all a joke on us, the audience, witnessing AI burn itself into artistic irrelevance. Or maybe we silently watch in horror as the grim future of art emerges on the horizon. All artists, not just in Bayreuth, will have to make a choice which path to follow.
