Met Opera to Broadcast ‘Ring’ Cycle in Movie Theaters in May

The Metropolitan Opera has announced that concurrent with its final live presentation of the Robert Lepage production of Wagner’s “Ring des Nibelungen” this spring (May 5-12), it will begin broadcasting the complete “Ring” cycle to movie theaters around the world, recycling the HD transmissions of the individual operas as they appeared over the last two seasons. On May 7, in the United States, Canada and some other countries, the Met will present “Wagner’s Dream,” a documentary on the production by Susan Froemke. The opera screenings will take place in the United States on May 9 (“Das Rheingold”), May 14 (“Die Walküre”), May 16 (“Siegfried”) and May 19 (“Götterdämmerung”). Screenings abroad will take place at various times, extending in some cases into summer and, in Japan, through August. This is said by the Met to be the first time a “Ring” cycle has been presented on a big screen, though the production will not be entirely unified, since the first two operas were recorded with James Levine conducting, the last two with Fabio Luisi.