Summer-Festival: Götterdämmerung

Forget everything you think you know about Wagner! Kent Nagano, the Dresden Festival Orchestra, and Concerto Köln are setting new standards with their performance of the Ring cycle. For the first time ever, this monumental project is being heard in a historically informed interpretation. Just as in Wagner’s own day, the string players use gut strings; the wind instruments are reconstructed based on 19th-century models; the orchestra’s tuning is lower; and the text is at times declaimed rather than traditionally “sung.” Suddenly everything becomes intelligible — and at times it almost recalls the delivery of art song. Working with an international research team, Nagano has brought surprising insights to light. The result is striking. “Light and airy” is how Jan Brachmann described this Wagner in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung; in particular, the winds impress “with sharper definition in their individual colors: they creak, belch, and grunt with a kind of unruly physicality.” With Götterdämmerung, the Ring comes full circle this summer. And once more we have the chance to experience Wagner’s music as he himself most likely heard it.

Performers:
Dresden Festival Orchestra
Concerto Köln
Dresden Festival Choir of the Richard Wagner Academy

Kent Nagano, conductor

Young Woo Kim, Siegfried
Johannes Kammler, Gunther
Daniel Schmutzhard, Alberich
Patrick Zielke, Hagen
Åsa Jäger, Brünnhilde
Sophia Brommer, Gutrune
Olivia Vermeulen, Waltraute
Jasmin Etminan, First Norn
Marie Luise Dressen, Second Norn
Valentina Farcas, Third Norn
Ania Vegry, Woglinde
Ida Aldrian, Wellgunde
Eva Vogel, Floßhilde

Program:
16.00 Introduction to the Concert with Susanne Stähr (KKL Luzern, Auditorium, in German)

Richard Wagner (1813–1883)
Götterdämmerung. Third day of the stage festival play Der Ring des Nibelungen
semi-staged performance with German and English surtitles

Intermissions at c. 19.05 and c. 20.40

“The Wagner Cycles” in collaboration with the Dresdner Musikfestspiele

Tickets from 24.03.2026 | 10 am (CET)