Raising the curtain on a work of superlatives: the Staatsoper Unter den Linden represents the ultimate challenge for any opera house, Wagner's "Der Ring des...

Raising the curtain on a work of superlatives: the Staatsoper Unter den Linden represents the ultimate challenge for any opera house, Wagner's "Der Ring des Nibelungen". Christian Thielemann conducts the Ring tetralogy, and Dmitri Tcherniakov, highly praised for his psychologically sophisticated productions, led the playful all-star ensemble coherently through the panorama of characters, situations and events that unfolded like a universe and consistently interpreted the sheer vastness and the manifold twists and turns of the Ring cosmos. "Musically, this 'Ring' blew away everything that had gone before - and we are talking about a performance history of more than one hundred years." (Die Welt) In the third part of his Ring tetralogy, Wagner incorporates fairy-tale motifs into his epic mythological story. The well-known tale of "The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn Fear" is echoed in "Siegfried" as well as episodes from the medieval "Nibelungenlied". "Andreas Schager - a heroic tenor like the world is looking for." (Berliner Morgenpost)