The Bayreuth Ring on Sky

[Bert Coules]

This is attracting some interestingly mixed comments on Twitter
(#WagnerSkyArts) and elsewhere. While I'm grateful for the chance to see
it, I am finding the presentation distinctly lacking: overlong interval
chats, appallingly bad subtitles, no introduction to the story for
newcomers, incredibly abrupt transitions from the chatter to the start of
each act, and no credits whatsoever.

And then there's the production...

[Mike Scott Rohan]

Post by Bert Coules
This is attracting some interestingly mixed comments on Twitter
(#WagnerSkyArts) and elsewhere. While I'm grateful for the chance to see
it, I am finding the presentation distinctly lacking: overlong interval
chats, appallingly bad subtitles, no introduction to the story for
newcomers, incredibly abrupt transitions from the chatter to the start of
each act, and no credits whatsoever.
And then there's the production...

Remember when ITV first showed the old Met Ring? With several commercial breaks throughout the acts?

I can't get Sky at the moment -- suspect seagulls nesting on my dish -- but it may be a lucky escape.

Cheers,

Mike

[Bert Coules]

Post by Mike Scott Rohan
Remember when ITV first showed the old Met Ring?
With several commercial breaks throughout the acts?

I do, and I watched it with pleasure. I remember thinking that Wagner, with
his eternal search for funding, would have understood the necessity.

Post by Mike Scott Rohan
I can't get Sky at the moment -- suspect seagulls
nesting on my dish -- but it may be a lucky escape.

Reactions were certainly mixed. To judge from online comments, it was
watched by not a few complete newcomers, some of whom positively loved it.
Older hands tended to think the opposite. I disliked the deliberate
perversity but often found myself admiring the sheer stagecraft, the
handling of the (many) extra characters, the complexity of the revolving
set, the technical side: all that on-stage filming and projection never once
faltered as far as I could see.

But it wasn't Wagner's Ring: it was Castorf's.