Wagner: Der Ring des Nibelungen (Live)

“I don’t want to make it sound any bigger than it is,” Fabio Luisi tells Apple Music Classical. “But performing the Ring is a spiritual journey. It really changes you as a person.” The Italian musician, chief conductor of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, wanted to share that journey with his Texas colleagues and helped raise the funds needed to make it happen. Their account of Wagner’s monumental Der Ring des Nibelungen, recorded live in concerts given at the acoustically blessed Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center in downtown Dallas, is hallmarked by its dramatic intensity, magnificent orchestral playing and A-grade cast of singers. Its release adds a major landmark to the catalogue of Ring recordings. “This was a once-in-a-lifetime project for everybody—for the orchestra, for the musicians, for the community, for the audience,” says Luisi. “And if we were going to do it, we had to do it well.” Fabio Luisi found his way to Wagner via the symphonies of Anton Bruckner. While he had worked on Wagner’s music with singers during his early career as a vocal coach, he only began to study his art in depth after becoming music director of Vienna’s Tonkünstler Orchestra in 1995. “I started conducting Bruckner with them,” he recalls. “That’s when I realised that if you want to conduct Bruckner properly, then you have to study Wagner too.” He went on to conduct Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer and Lohengrin in the opera house, together with parts of Tannhäuser and Parsifal. His eureka moment came, however, during his time as chief conductor of the Dresden Staatskapelle and Semperoper in the 2000s. “That was the turn of me becoming a Wagnerian,” Luisi recalls. “In Dresden I was offered my first complete Ring. I had to take it over at short notice. In three weeks, I had to conduct all four operas, which I’d never conducted before. That was a challenge, but it was also totally immersive. It was my first contact with the Ring and a very important one. I always say this changed my life.” In what way? “It changed my life as a person, it changed my life as a musician, it changed my life as a conductor,” he replies. “I thought, look, this experience with the Ring was life changing for me. I would like to offer my musicians in Dallas the same possibility. Maybe you’re going to hate it, because some people hate Wagner, we know that. But the fact that you will be involved in this project, somehow it will be something that will stay with you.” Having arrived in post in Dallas as music director designate in 2019, Luisi was determined that performing opera in concert should be part of the orchestra’s tool kit. He began with Richard Strauss’ Salome and has since added Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, excerpts from Lehár’s The Merry Widow and Puccini’s Madama Butterfly to the list. The four operas of the Ring were given in semi-staged performances and crowned in October 2024 by a run of the complete cycle. “It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about music or literature or even figurative art. These big artworks are a mirror for us, where we can see ourselves. And the Ring is probably the biggest mirror of all. It’s exciting because in this journey you will meet people you know. Every one of us knows somebody like Wotan, with his thirst of power, and somebody like Siegfried, who is pure and brave. There are such people, they are among us. There are not so many operas like this. But the Ring is indeed the theatre of life.” The Dallas Ring is the first to be recorded complete by an American orchestra in concert; those made by the Metropolitan Opera in New York and Seattle Opera arose from staged productions. The conductor’s handpicked cast includes such seasoned Wagnerians as Lise Lindstrom, Mark Delavan, Stephen Milling and Christopher Ventris, with Swedish tenor Daniel Johansson making a standout debut in the role of Siegfried, and Sara Jakubiak proving equally impressive in her first full outing as Sieglinde. “Of course, I want to work with the best,” says Fabio Luisi. “But I also want to work with artists I know and with whom I can establish a relationship, who can understand what I mean, are able to accept the challenge of this work and take a risk. I don’t like the word, but I have my ‘vision’ of the Ring. And I have to put all the bricks together. Many of those bricks are what the singers offer me during rehearsals and in performance. This is very important. But at the end, it’s me who has to put everything together. I cannot just do what the singers want—I have to bring them into my concept. So, I must know the artists I work with. This is how the casting of the Ring in Dallas came together.”