Wagner: Der Ring des Nibelungen (Live)

“I don’t want to make it sound any bigger than it is,” Fabio Luisi tells Apple Music Classical. “But performing the Ring is a spiritual journey. It really changes you as a person.” The Italian musician, chief conductor of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, wanted to share that journey with his Texas colleagues and helped raise the funds needed to make it happen. Their account of Wagner’s monumental Der Ring des Nibelungen, recorded live in concerts given at the acoustically blessed Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center in downtown Dallas, is hallmarked by its dramatic intensity, magnificent orchestral playing and A-grade cast of singers. Its release adds a major landmark to the catalogue of Ring recordings. “This was a once-in-a-lifetime project for everybody—for the orchestra, for the musicians, for the community, for the audience,” says Luisi. “And if we were going to do it, we had to do it well.” Fabio Luisi found his way to Wagner via the symphonies of Anton Bruckner. While he had worked on Wagner’s music with singers during his early career as a vocal coach, he only began to study his art in depth after becoming music director of Vienna’s Tonkünstler Orchestra in 1995. “I started conducting Bruckner with them,” he recalls. “That’s when I realised that if you want to conduct Bruckner properly, then you have to study Wagner too.” He went on to conduct Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer and Lohengrin in the opera house, together with parts of Tannhäuser and Parsifal. His eureka moment came, however, during his time as chief conductor of the Dresden Staatskapelle and Semperoper in the 2000s. “That was the turn of me becoming a Wagnerian,” Luisi recalls. “In Dresden I was offered my first complete Ring. I had to take it over at short notice. In three weeks, I had to conduct all four operas, which I’d never conducted before. That was a challenge, but it was also totally immersive. It was my first contact with the Ring and a very important one. I always say this changed my l