Wagner - Der Ring des Nibelungen & "Wagner's Dream" 8xDVD SET 2012 The Metropolitan Opera / James Levine, Fabio Luisi / Directed by Gary Halvorson / Produced by Robert Lepage / Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried, Götterdämmerung / Deutsche Grammophon

UPC 044007347706

MADE IN EU

REGION 0 NTSC DVD (ALL REGIONS)

AUDIO: Pcm Stereo, DTS 5.1

Subtitles: English, German, French, Spanish, Chinese

TOTAL RUNTIME: 1111 MINUTES (920 min operas, 114 min Wagner's Dream, 77 min extras) - 8 discs

English Summary:

Presented over four installments during the Metropolitan Opera's 2010-11 and 2011-12 seasons, director Robert Lepage's elaborate and controversial staging of Richard Wagner's Teutonic opera tetralogy stars Jonas Kaufmann as Siegmund, Bryn Terfel as Wotan, and Deborah Voigt as Brunnhilde; with Stephanie Blythe, Eric Owens. 18 1/2 hrs. on eight discs. Widescreen (Enhanced); Soundtrack: German; Subtitles: English, French, Spanish, German, Mandarin. Also includes the bonus feature "Wagner's Dream" (2012). In German with English subtitles.

Also contains the film ‘Wagner’s Dream’ – a documentary about the making of the Metropolitan Operas new Ring cycle.

The most famous, the most performed, the most thrilling, and the most recorded opera cycle in music history. A unique and exclusive package, on multi-set DVD and Blu-Ray, of the most successful Ring Cycle production of the 21th century.

Filmed at the world-famous Metropolitan Opera House in New York, in high definition – the award winning Robert Lepage production. Featuring Bryn Terfel as Wotan – universally recognized as the finest bass-baritone – and Wotan – of his generation. Also starring Deborah Voigt as Brunnhilde, and star tenor Jonas Kaufmann as Siegmund.

This award-winning and ground-breaking production has been seen by over 150,000 people at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and subsequently by a remarkable 800,000 people in cinemas and movie-theatres around the globe

Cast

James Levine

R. Wagner

Jonas Kaufmann

Bryn Terfel

Deborah Voigt

Stephanie Blythe

Hans-Peter Konig

Jay Hunter Morris

Eric Owens

Gerhard Siegel

Eva Maria Westbroek

Bryn Terfel (Bass-Baritone), Tamara Mumford (Alto), Franz-Josef Selig (Bass), Richard Croft (Tenor), Eric Owens (Baritone), Hans-Peter König (Bass), Patricia Bardon (Contralto), Gerhard Siegel (Tenor), Lisette Oropesa (Soprano), Jennifer Johnson Cano (Mezzo-Soprano), Stephanie Blythe (Contralto)

Metropolitan Opera Orchestra
James Levine (Conductor), Fabio Luisi (Conductor)

Robert Lepage (Director)

This unique package on multi-set DVD captures Robert Lepage's Met Opera production of Der Ring des Nibelungen in stunning high definition.

Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung), WWV 86, is a cycle of four German-language epic music dramas composed by Richard Wagner. The works are based loosely on characters from Norse sagas and the Nibelungenlied. The composer termed the cycle a "Bühnenfestspiel" (stage festival play), structured in three days preceded by a Vorabend ("preliminary evening"). It is often referred to as the Ring cycle, Wagner's Ring, or simply The Ring.

Wagner wrote the libretto and music over the course of about twenty-six years, from 1848 to 1874. The four parts that constitute the Ring cycle are, in sequence:

• Das Rheingold (The Rhinegold)
• Die Walküre (The Valkyrie)
• Siegfried
• Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods)

Individual works of the sequence are often performed separately,^[1] and indeed the operas contain dialogues that mention events in the previous operas, so that a viewer could watch any of them without having watched the previous parts and still understand the plot. However, Wagner intended them to be performed in series. The first performance as a cycle opened the first Bayreuth Festival in 1876, beginning with Das Rheingold on 13 August and ending with Götterdämmerung on 17 August. Opera stage director Anthony Freud stated that Der Ring des Nibelungen "marks the high-water mark of our art form, the most massive challenge any opera company can undertake."

Wilhelm Richard Wagner (/ˈvɑːɡnər/ VAHG-nər, German: [ˈʁɪçaʁt ˈvaːɡnɐ] 22 May 1813 – 13 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most opera composers, Wagner wrote both the libretto and the music for each of his stage works. Initially establishing his reputation as a composer of works in the romantic vein of Carl Maria von Weber and Giacomo Meyerbeer, Wagner revolutionised opera through his concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk ("total work of art"), by which he sought to synthesise the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, with music subsidiary to drama. He described this vision in a series of essays published between 1849 and 1852. Wagner realised these ideas most fully in the first half of the four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung).

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