Iain Paterson – Wotan/Wanderer
Stanislas de Barbeyrac – Siegmund
Elza van den Heever – Sieglinde
Tamara Wilson – Brünnhilde
Andreas Schager – Siegfried
Eve Maux-Hubeaux – Fricka, Waltraute
Günther Groissböck – Hunding
Gerhard Siegel – Mime
Simon O'Neill – Loge
Brian Mulligan – Alberich
Kwangchul Young – Fasolt
Sinead Campbell Wallace – Gutrune
Johannes Martin Kränzle – Gunther

THE CONDUCTOR

Selected as Best Conductor 2025 (Oper! Awards), Pablo Heras-Casado is one of today's most sought-after and versatile conductors, regularly performing with the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the Staatskapelle Berlin, the Munich Philharmonic, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Vienna Philharmonic, the La Scala Philharmonic, and the NHK Symphony Orchestra, among others. Since his outstanding debut at the Bayreuth Festival with Parsifal (2023), he has also been considered one of the leading Wagner interpreters of his generation.

THE PRODUCTION

It is safe to say that this new production, by noted Spanish director Calixto Bieito, will not be “traditional,” if that term has any meaning in reference to a cycle of operas about gods and giants and dwarfs and the end of the world. He was commissioned to conduct the Paris Ring in 2015 and was in rehearsals for an April 2020 opening when the coronavirus pandemic put an end to any performances. Bieito changed many of his ideas by the time a new cast gathered last December, influenced by James Bridle’s book New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future. The AI machines developed in Rheingold will lead to war in Die Walküre, nature will rebel in Siegfried, and characters will gather in a Wagnerian-period living room as consciousness disappears into a black hole in Götterdämmerung. (see more here.)

YOUR FESTIVAL PASS

Your first-category tickets entitle you to light refreshments during the intermissions of 3 three operas (Rheingold doesn't have an intermission). Your Festival pass also includes the opportunity to attend (some at extra cost) introductions offered before each performance, four talks, as well as an exhibition at the Palais Garnier focusing on the revolutionary aspects of the tetralogy, both musically and in terms of the political and cultural context of its time.

OUR HOTEL

We have selected a charming four-star boutique hotel within walking distance of the Opera Bastille, offering an exceptional blend of contemporary comfort and artistic charm. Three times a year young artists or confirmed talents are invited to exhibit in the art gallery on the ground floor of the hotel. This space is a vast light-filled area that also houses the salon-bar, where some of our conversations will take place.
 

INCLUDED TOURS

You will have the opportunity to discover two private mansions (known as "hôtels particuliers") in Paris: 18th-century L'hôtel de Soubise, in the heart of the Marais district, boasting a rich Rococo interior decoration; and the 19th-century home-turned-into-museum of the wealthy Jacquemart André, whose private collection includes works from the Italian Renaissance, Flemish masters, and French 18th-century paintings, sculptures, and tapestries.

OPTIONAL DAY TOURS

An optional day-trip will be provided at additional cost, on a day with no Ring production, to the 17th-century Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte, built for Louis XIV’s finance minister Nicolas Fouquet. A source of inspiration for Versailles, the estate is the joint project of architect Louis Le Vau, painter Charles Le Brun, and landscape gardener André Le Notre, a team that was commissioned to design Versailles.
 

ADDITIONAL PERFORMANCES

It is too early to know the regular season schedules for the Palais Garnier, Opéra Bastille, Theatre des Champs Elysees, Chatelet, Philharmonie, or any of Paris’s other venues. Once we have that information, we will share it with you and place orders for anything you want to attend on the nights between the Ring operas . . . if you are up to it and want a break from Wagner.