Gergiev's Ring lacks box office sparkle

Not many takers so far for Valery Gergiev's Mariinsky Ring, which rolls into Birmingham in November. A glance at the Birmingham Hippodrome website suggests only around a quarter of the seats have been sold.

Individual tickets for the four operas are now available at prices ranging from £115 to £200 per opera - or more than four times what you'd pay for a Welsh National Opera show at the same venue. As reader Bohdan wrote to me "I was initially quite excited when you announced this event a few months ago, but now that I’ve seen that a reasonably priced ticket will cost £200, I shan’t be going. In my opinion it’s way over-priced for this particular production." A sentiment I am sure will be shared.

Comments

[sub_opera]

On 14 November 2013, talking about the Mariinsky Ring visit to Birmingham, IM said: "To most Wagner fans, any Ring is better than no Ring. It will sell."

That most unsophisticated of Rings (I saw it in 2009)should not sell and it appears it is not selling.

It is a rare occurrence when I am glad IM is wrong.
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Intermezzo replies - It's nearly 7 months to opening night, so you might want to save your predictions for a while.

[Ruth]

Even if I did not find the dates inconvenient (I'll be out of the country), the tickets overpriced and the conductor's politics reprehensible, the main thing putting me off is that I saw the Mariinsky Ring on its last two visits to the UK. The first time, in Cardiff, it had much to recommend it despite a rather confused production; the second, as you know, was rather unfortunate.

There are occasions when having seen something twice is a valid reason for being keen to do so again. This is rather the opposite.

[Johann Erinn]

I'm with IM on that one.

[essar]

If they do a version where Alberich is Putin, the gods are various opera and ballet characters trying to build a new Mariinsky Theatre and the Valkyries are Pussy Riot, I'll go.

[Nikolaus Vogel]

Hehe! Brilliant Essar! ;)

[Roy]

Anyone know anything about the Freiburg company coming to Norwich with Parsifal and Tannhauser in July? Are they any good ?

[Richard]

Thanks for pointing that out, I'd not heard about them.

[Nikolaus Vogel]

Roy - Freiburg is a provincial theatre which has a rather good reputation as a Wagner house with enterprising casting - they take risks on young singers some of whom have gone on to greater things - and I believe Donald Runnicles was music director there in the 1980s. That's presumably where he learnt his Wagner.

[Nikolaus Vogel]

I just looked up Theater Freiburg on Google and the Tannhäuser is Christian Voigt, one of the rising German heldentenors, who was to have sung Siegfried in Graham Vick's Palermo productions of Siegfried and Götterdämmerung before they were cancelled. So I imagine he will be quite respectable. I've been to several small German and Austrian houses and the singers are often surprisingly good.

[Richard]

Looking at the Norwich website, Voigt is singing Tannhauser one night, and Marius Vlad the other. Doesn't seem to be any indication of who is doing which night.

Anyway, looks like an interesting couple of events and I'm sure there's an Alan Partridge theme park to visit as well.

[Nikolaus Vogel]

I haven't been able to find out anything about the Freiburg Parsifal - they don't seem to be doing it in Freiburg this season, which is odd....

[Caroline]

The Parsifal ran last season, directed by Frank Hilbrich, who did also The Ring Cycle and Lohengrin in Freiburg, and is directing in ROH (Lindbury) next season. Christian Voigt was originally Parsifal, in Norwich sung by Roberto Gionfriddo (Siegmund in the Ring) There are trailers for both on the Norwich website: https://secure.theatreroyalnorwich.co.uk/Online/default.asp?doWork::WScontent::loadArticle=Load&BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::article_id=1B2EBD70-11E4-45D9-AAA3-EC975E120578&sessionlanguage=&SessionSecurity::linkName=