Kaper Bech Holten’s spectacular Copenhagen production presents Wagner’s epic Ring cycle as the drama of its heroine Brünnhilde.

The Copenhagen Ring has won the Grammophone Award 2008 for DVD of the Year.

It is distributed by Decca.
The Copenhagen Ring is produced live on stage.

By setting each of the four operas in a pivotal decade of the twentieth century, the story of Brünnhilde becomes also a history of the modern age and of the ideologies and conflicts that tore it apart.

Richard Wagner: The Ring

  • The Rhinegold (I)
  • The Walkyrie (II)
  • Siegfried (III)
  • Twighlight of the Gods (IV)
  • H.M. Queen Margrethe II of Denmark meets Kasper Bech Holten, the director of The Copenhagen Ring at Fredensborg Castle.

 

Reviews

Thomas Michelsen (Politiken), 4. July 2008:
The intimate personal interacting and the cinematic exacting details in directing and props, which were the very hallmark of Holten’s ‘Copenhagen Ring ‘, come to their right in a DVD production, using a great number of camera angles close to faces and fates… In its own way, it is an even stronger ‘Ring-story’, which has now been fished out of the ashes, burned down on DVD and released in a well produced box-set, where images are seldom out of focus, and where the Royal Chapel and Operachorus are complemented with soloists of genuine quality in enthusiastic Wagner art. The production simply adds a new layer to the work. This qualifies it as an independent work of art – and as such it is all but completely successful.


ArkivMusic.com
The production for DVD is extremely detailed and evocative – camera angles discriminatingly chosen to provide information in the subtext, often in short glimpses. Here the DVD viewer is at an advantage compared to the theatre audience. We don’t need to search for the focus of the action.


Financial Times
A Ring to be reckoned with


Opera Now
This is one Ring cycle that I can recommend heartily – musically satisfying, dramatically engaging and full of memorable imagery.


Opera
A remarkable company achievement


Toronto Star
New opera house hosts top-flight Wagner