Inside the Dallas Symphony’s Groundbreaking Recording of Wagner’s Ring cycle
"Fabio Luisi and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra made US history in 2024 when they performed Wagner’s Ring cycle – a set now released on record. Scott Cantrell reports on an extraordinary achievement, and hears from some of those involved
So far as anyone at the League of American Orchestras or Opera America knew, it was a first: the first time an American symphony orchestra had performed Wagner’s complete Der Ring des Nibelungen as a cycle over the course of a week. It was the Dallas Symphony Orchestra (DSO) and its Music Director, Fabio Luisi, who presented the four operas in October 2024. Now, three months before the 150th anniversary of the tetralogy’s world premiere at the Bayreuth Festival, the Dallas Ring is being issued as a 13-disc box-set on Delos, the American label owned by Outhere Music.
The casts include laudable Wagnerians Mark Delavan (Wotan/Wanderer), Lise Lindstrom (Brünnhilde), Daniel Johansson (Siegfried), Christopher Ventris (Siegmund), Sara Jakubiak (Sieglinde), Tómas Tómasson (Alberich), Deniz Uzon (Fricka) and Tamara Mumford (Erda). Presented in semi-stagings by Italian director Alberto Triola, Das Rheingold and Die Walküre were initially unveiled in May 2024, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung the following October, immediately before the full cycle between October 13 and 20. The recordings were supervised by multiple-Grammy-winning producer Dirk Sobotka, in collaboration with the DSO’s resident recording engineer George Gilliam. The release revives a relationship with Delos, which issued numerous recordings with the orchestra during the 1994-2006 music directorship of Andrew Litton, including most of a Mahler symphony cycle.
‘When I did The Ring for the first time, in Dresden, it was a spiritual experience, way beyond a musical experience’ – Fabio Luisi
Luisi’s career has included appointments at major opera companies as well as orchestras, including seven years at New York’s Metropolitan Opera. At his 2018 introduction as the DSO’s next Music Director, succeeding Jaap van Zweden, the Italian conductor announced plans to include regular opera performances in the orchestra’s schedules. In February 2020, before the Covid-19 pandemic shut down performances worldwide, he led a semi-staged Strauss Salome. Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin followed in 2022 and, after The Ring, Puccini’s Madama Butterfly in January 2026. Mozart’s Don Giovanni is scheduled for March 2027.
Luisi was named the Met’s Principal Conductor in 2011, when longtime Music Director James Levine was repeatedly sidelined by health issues. When Levine had to withdraw midway through the controversial 2012 Robert Lepage staging of The Ring, Luisi took over for the remaining Siegfried and Götterdämmerung. The 2013 Grammy-winning DVD set of the production thus features Levine pacing the first two operas, Luisi the remaining two. Luisi went on to conduct further performances of the complete cycle.
Although there was speculation that Luisi, then General Music Director of Zurich Opera, was being groomed to succeed Levine, Luisi said there were never any such discussions. Levine stepped down in 2016, and in the wake of sexual harassment accusations the following year, the Met (among others) terminated associations with him. Yannick Nézet-Séguin took the Met job in 2018. (...)"
Scott Cantrell - Gramophone