Chéreau

Summary

Dominique Pagani mentions Patrice Chéreau almost solely for his staging of the centenary Ring at Bayreuth in 1976, conducted by Boulez. He first draws out its social reading: the underground world shown as assembly-line work, coal mines, the world of the proletariat12. In his view, this staging shows the passage from the world of the gods to that of men. He calls the final scene "almost a stroke of genius": a crowd of men that marks the disappearance of the gods and the beginning of the reign of man34. He points out ideas of detail: the pieces of the sword kept by Mime in newspaper, the caged bird, which is not in the stage directions, a dam's embankment to stand for the river, the Rhinemaidens as saloon girls, Gutrune as a late-19th-century bourgeoise56. He repeatedly praises Chéreau's direction of actors, rare in opera, with singers placed lying down or flat on their stomachs. He also suggests that the set for the Norns was inspired by a painting by Böcklin.

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Summary produced automatically from 20 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.