Ionarts: Bayreuth on the Danube: The Budapest Wagner Days. Production Photos from Das Rheingold

Freia (Lilla Horti), Fasolt (Per Bach Nissen) & Fafner (Walter Fink)

The Budapest Wagner Days are a 15-year old institution that I only got to know this year. Shame on me. At the heart of the Wagner Days, initiated by Ádám Fischer and taking place at the Müpa, Budapest’s splendid modern arts center, has been an annual Ring Cycle, always coupled with another Wagner opera. Last year, this cycle was on hiatus in favor of two non-Ring Operas. The feedback was immediate: "We want our Ring back", chanted the international crowd that had come to love the tradition and the semi-staged production by Hartmut Schörghofer & his wife. I don't know if they went to the Müpa Center with placards in their hands and horns on their helmets, but the Wagner Days were quick about bringing the Ring back, with the videos - an essential part of the production(s) - overhauled and brought up to technological date. Blood now splatters in HD. A good thing that they did that, too, one must assume (not having seen the previous incarnation), because these things tend to stale quickly. (Take the La fura dels Baus' vapid Ring Cycle, where the video elements looked like HAL 9000 had mated with a Windows 95 Screen Saver soon after that Ring first hit the stage.) To make up for the hiatus, the Ring was put on twice, from June 13. until 16. and from June 20. until the 23.

Here is part one (of two) of my review on ClassicsToday: A Magnificent Budapest Ring: Prelude and Rheingold

Below are loads of production photos from Das Rheingold to go with that review (or titillate you all on their own.)