Brisbane gets a Ring cycle

Brisbane gets a Ring cycle

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norman lebrecht

August 22, 2019

Opera Australia has unveiled plans for a Wagner Ring cycle in the plain-spoken northern city of Brisbane in November-December 2020.

The director is Chen Shi-Zheng, believed to be the first Chinese to create a fully staged production of the Wagner epic. Chen, though based in Shanghai, has not presented new work in China for two decades.

The Queensland Symphony, which lacks a music director, will be in the pit.

The conductor is Philippe Auguin. Full cast here.

Comments

  • Mustafa Kandan says:

    Philippe Auguin will be the conductor (not a bad choice). The Australian Opera can only perform mature Wagner in Melbourne & now in Brisbane due to a lack of adequate venues in Sydney.

    • MacroV says:

      The Ring has been done in Adelaide, too.

      But true, that while the Sydney Opera House is an architectural wonder, it’s pretty limited as an opera house, with the principal venue in fact being a concert hall. And its iconic status and name may forever prevent construction of an actual opera house in Sydney.

  • Wimsey says:

    Three cycles in less than one month?! Poor singers.

    • Van Howell says:

      If you mean overworked abused exploited singers, maybe you should make that clear. Other it sounds like you might mean hoarse, wavering, incompetent singers. The context indicates you meant the former, but that’s not how I read it at first glance.

  • Gordon Freeman says:

    “PLAIN SPOKEN” !!!

  • RW2013 says:

    And why isn’t Alondra conducting?

  • John Rook says:

    Allison Oakes will be a superb Brünnhilde.

  • Simon A Bird says:

    Alison Oakes is wonderful! I have seen her in Wagner here in Budapest (Wagner Nights) and in Europe. If I wasn’t so far away…but I do have the Biextio/Paris Ring…

  • Brisbanite says:

    Why ‘northern city’? Northern implies it is away from somewhere else, you dont call NYC the northern city away from Atlanta so why do it to Brisbane? It’s not even north anyway, if anything its eastern, the most eastern capital you can get. Stupid author.

    • Eyeroll says:

      Because relative to all of the other capital cities but one, it is northern. Just like northern in England refers to the bit that isn’t in the south. And people refer to the north and the south of the US as well. What a ridiculous thing to get riled about.

    • damianjb1 says:

      To an Australian, northern would be Cairns or Darwin.

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