Lower Silesian Opera launches Wagner's Ring Cycle
29.10.2004 - Elzbieta Krajowska

For the first time since WWII the Lower Silesian Opera has launched an enormous project - the staging of Richard Wagner's monumental operatic work, the Ring Cycle. The production is not at the opera's usual home but in the Hundred Year Hall - the Hala Ludowa. We went to Wroclaw to find out more about this super-production of Die Walkure.

When the Silesian Opera staged Rheingold last year at the unlikely venue of the Hala Ludowa, the production attracted an audience of 14 thousand. Quite honestly, Wagner at the Hala Ludowa, with a background of extraordinary architecture, supported with some incredible lighting, music, and voices not to be sneered at, is truly an experience which has brought Wagnerites to Wroclaw. Boguslaw Szynalski sang Wotan in Das Rhinegold and is also back this year in the same role...

"If this time we have such a reception as last year, it'll be fantastic. So many people came for the production and we got a lot of good press."

Elisabeth Werres has realised a dream, singing Sieglinde:

"Oh yes, there are a lot of special things about this production. For one thing, the use of microport. We never use microports in the opera, but of course in a place such as the Hala Ludowa, which is not made for symphonic music or vocal music, you have to, so that was new, and the Hala Ludowa itself is amazing, I mean just from the outside, it looks like, you think - oh this could be Valhalla, you know maybe if it were a little bit cleaned or something, you know, it could be Valhalla, the size of the place, the size of the stage is unusual, most stages are smaller, so there are many many new things."

Peter Svensson is Siegmund and is not worried about the small experience in Poland in staging and singing Wagner:

"I do not think so that it is necessary to have a tradition, especially for Wagnerian music. It's the fact that Wagnerian music is somehow eternal and consists with the problems having been and which will be and which are. And this is the only thing. "

In Poland, Wagner can still have the wrong associations - or so I thought until we spoke to Beata Libera-Orkowska who sings Fricka:

"What stereotypes? I believe that when Poles start really listening to the music of Wagner, they will find so much for their own selves because there is so much emotion in the music, which is mainly about love."

I asked Director of the Lower Silesian Opera, conductor Ewa Michnik if she believes she has contributed to doing away with some of the stereotypes:

"Yes, I think so. Otherwise people wouldn't come to see this, after all nobody makes them come. We have such a young cast and a young orchestra; all talented and young, and it's something everyone notices."

Hans Peter Lehmann is the director of the production:

"I really feel to come home, it is such a wonderful city and people are really so open-minded and interested, and the artists, the orchestra, Mrs. Michnik and all her staff, I really feel welcome and that makes work easy and happy and creative."

The next part, Siegfried, is scheduled for June.