Melbourne Ring Festival

Overview

200 years after his birth, and still causing a fuss. This Friday marks the beginning of a month-long celebration of Richard Wagner led by Opera Australia. While the centrepiece is a four-part, $15 million production of Der Ring des Nibelungen — sorry, tickets sold out months ago — the festival will in fact feature over 30 events including film, visual art, discussion panels and some more accessible operatic showings.

Lyndon Terracini, Artisitic Director of Opera Australia, has described Wagner's Ring Cycle as "a life-changing work of art", and even if we can't see the piece itself, we may just get a good idea from the intensive program on offer. At 1pm on Saturday November 16, Federation Square will be taken over by actual valkyries on horseback for a free celebratory concert of Wagner's most famous piece. For the first week of the festival, ACMI will be showing two films about the man himself. The Arts Centre will be alight with a very interesting multimedia work, and the Town Hall will be alight with lively discussion as we debate that big problem — can we ever separate the politics from the art?

If that all gets a little heavy for you, or perhaps the emotion of the music gets to be a bit much, you can always head down to Fed Square. Twice a day for the duration of the festival, the big screens will be delivering a classic rundown from Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd.