WAGNER’s RING

Richard Wager’s operatic tetralogy “The Ring of the Nibelung” (first performed in Bayreuth in 1876) is one of the most important works of art based on the Nibelung legend and it has gained widespread familiarity.

For this reason, the Nibelungen Museum in cooperation with the National Theatre in Mannheim offers a separate museum tour on the topic of this work. The first part of this tour was opened in the Tower of Visions in 2015, and with the help of selected props from the Mannheim production of the operas (premiered between 2011 and 2013) it presents and explains WAGNER’s RING.

The media guide uses film footage to introduce the visitor to the fascinating world of the imagery employed by the renowned director and stage and costume designer Achim Freyer. The distinctive voice of the commentary belongs to Harriet Kracht, an actress from Berlin. Exactly what the grasping hand, the life-size puppet dressed as a clown and the pair of red canvas trainers have to do with Wagner’s Nibelung myth is explained by the director himself in an interview. A documentary film and a conversation with Dietrich Borchmeyer, the well-known literary scholar and expert on Wagner, give information about the life of Richard Wagner and about his Ring cycle, which was his life’s work. Wagner summed it up as follows: “The Ring is a poetic expression of my life, of everything that I am and everything that I feel.”

While the tour in the Tower of Visions deals with the plot and the characters of Wagner’s Ring, the second part of the tour in the Audio Tower focusses on Wagner’s music. This Audio Tour is planned to open at autumn 2017.