Das Rheingold

CL Critic Doug DeLoach Recommends: The Atlanta Opera closes out its 2022-23 main stage season with General and Artistic Director Tomer Zvulun’s new production of Das Rheingold, For the company’s first attempt at staging any opera from Richard Wagner’s monumental Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung) or Ring Cycle, Zvulun has reunited with scenic and projections designer Erhard Rom and lighting designer Robert Wierzel. Complemented by the costumes of European Opera Prize-winner Mattie Ullrich, Zvulun set out to capture the opera’s timeless mythology in a style as grandly operatic as opera gets in the 21^st century. Das Rheingold recounts the exploits of gods, giants, dwarves and nymphs who inhabit the Rhine as they fixate on and quarrel over a supremely powerful, but cursed, gold ring (sound familiar?) According to the company press release, this production of www.atlantaopera.org. - DD

CL Critic Kevin C. Madigan Recommends: The first in a quartet of epic music dramas that make up Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle is being produced in the South for the first time, according to Atlanta Opera. (It’s scheduled to be followed by Die Walküre next season). Based on Nordic folk-tales and legends and first staged in Munich in 1869, the opus has gods, dwarves, giants, river nymphs, and dragons scheming and dreaming of power in the mythical Valhalla, or “hall of the fallen.” This all-new production from Tomer Zvulun features Greer Grimsley in the lead role of Wotan. ( HuffPostsaid Grimsley has a “wide-ranging and handsome voice” and touted that “he sings like a god.”) Kristinn Sigmundsson appears as Fasolt and Elizabeth DeShong as Fricka; her sister Freia is played by Jessica Faselt, with Arthur Fagen conducting. The story includes depictions of kidnapping and ransoming, we are warned, and is sung in German (of course) with English supertitles. — KCM