Human Behaviour

When Dmitri Tcherniakov’s staging of the Ring first appeared at the beginning of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden’s 2022 season, it was every bit as confounding as everyone expected: rigorously intelligent and visually dazzling, it pushed Wagner’s story in all manner of unconventional directions, offering unexpected insights without abandoning the work’s core emotional pleasures. The first performances – conducted on short notice by Christian Thielemann, who had not yet taken over as musical director of the Staatsoper – succeeded as much on the strength of their extraordinary vocal performances as on the ingenuity of the staging, and by the end of the first cycle, the production already seemed destined to acquire the status of legend.

An additional three cycles were given in the same season, followed by another two a year later (under…