The tetralogy presented at the Budapest Wagner Days festival in 2008 and 2009 earned enormous acclaim from Wagner fans. Ten years later, in 2019, Müpa Budapest presented an updated version of Der Ring des Nibelungen on the stage of the Béla Bartók National Concert Hall. Formulating his thoughts about the opera cycle in the film, artistic director and conductor Ádám Fischer says, 'Each year the image of the Ring I have living inside me changes slightly, and I imagine it differently from one year to the next. A lifetime is too short a time to recognise and understand everything there is in the 15 hours of music that make up the work. The story of the Ring is relevant in every era: money and power are cursed, and yet we still yearn for what will destroy us. It is an eternal human story, one that is timely and modern in every age. The renewal was necessary because over the past ten years, we – both the artists involved and the audience – have all changed a great deal. The associations that appeared in the previous production of the opera cycle are no longer quite as relevant. What appears on the stage, however, must always address the present.' Born out of this spirit was an updated production of the four-night musical drama that Fischer and director Hartmut Schörghofer have both described as a perfect piece of work. The documentary film is in Hungarian, interviews in German and English appear with Hungarian subtitles.

Presented by: Müpa Budapest