Fabio Luisi on Wagner's Ring Cycle

2026 marks 150 years since the first performance of Wagner’s complete cycle of four operas, Der Ring des Nibelungen, at the Bayreuth Festival in 1876. It is fitting, therefore, that the Dallas Symphony Orchestra have released a recording of this monumental work to celebrate their 125th anniversary season.

Captured live from a series of concert performances back in 2024 conducted by their Music Director, Fabio Luisi, this recording represents an enormous undertaking, especially for an orchestra outside of the opera house. I spoke to Fabio about his experiences conducting Wagner’s music, the thought processes behind casting his singers, and how he persuaded his ensemble to take on such a demanding project.

Could I ask about your association with Wagner in general and whether there were any performances that made a big impression on you? 

The first experience I had with Wagner was during my time in Vienna with the Tonkünstler Orchestra, where I conducted part of The Ring - the first act of Walküre and the Immolation of Brünnhilde, but just in concert performances. The second time was The Ring Without Words by Henk de Vlieger, which is very cleverly done because it uses only the original parts of the scores that are without voices: in one hour you have a little bit of everything. The first time I conducted a complete opera was in Berlin with The Flying Dutchman and Lohengrin, and then it was the big Ring project in Dresden and then in New York. 

As for recordings, one that made a huge impression on me was Karl Böhm’s Bayreuth recording of The Ring, and I think it is one of the best recordings we have. I was also very impressed by Janowski’s Ring with the Dresden Staatskapelle. 

How much of an Italian Wagner tradition is there?

Italy has a big Wagner tradition, not so much with The Ring, but more with operas like Lohengrin and Tannhäuser, which have been performed in Italian. The vocal part in those operas is very important, less so in The Ring because it's a later time and Wagner had different ideas about how to utilise voices. Nevertheless, he was a big fan of Vincenzo Bellini exactly because of his beautiful singing lines, which he used especially in Lohengrin and Tannhäuser. This is one of the concepts I tried to use for our recording, to have singers that are real singers and not just singing actors, which is nowadays very fashionable on stages around the world. I think there is still that idea of beautiful singing in The Ring, so I needed singers who can afford to do that and who are capable of singing a legato line. 

It's interesting to hear nowadays some Wagner singers that are perhaps a bit lighter such as Klaus Florian Vogt and Michael Spyres, so there definitely seems to be that interest in not just having huge voices that belt everything out. 

Yes, I mean a certain volume is important, because this is what is requested not only for the music but also for the characterisation of the person; mastering the vocal technique is always very important. 

Clearly Wagner was aware of this given the uniquely sunken pit that he had constructed at Bayreuth.

Yes, that was what Wagner wanted, for the singer not to be overwhelmed by the orchestra. He knew very well that he had written a heavy orchestral part, and sometimes it was difficult for the singers to be heard over this orchestra, so Bayreuth was made exactly to avoid this big problem. 

How did your relationship with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra begin, and how soon into your tenure as music director did you decide you wanted to do The Ring? 

My relationship with the orchestra was very good from the beginning, and it was always one of my signature intentions to bring opera in concert to Dallas. They had never done that before, so I started with Salome, which is not an easy task, and then we went on to other projects. But very soon I started to think about this project because first of all it needs years of planning ahead, and it's something that no other American symphony orchestra has done before outside the opera house. Also, symphony orchestras play the entire repertoire, but they normally do not play some works by the greatest composers such as Verdi or Wagner. So it’s not only because I want to do opera but also because it is important that my musicians know these composers and their works.

Wagner made such a difference in my life as a musician, and so I thought if just a small piece of that experience could be transferred to my orchestra, it would be a win-win for everybody. And indeed, at the beginning of this project, they were scared or they were complaining, "This is too long. We've never done this," or, "It is too tiring, a lot of rehearsals”. But by the end, so many musicians came with tears in their eyes and told me how unbelievable an experience it was to be involved in such a project and to play this great music. So as I said, it changed my life, and I hope that it was also an improvement in the life of my musicians. 

Apart from the sheer length of the pieces, what are the most challenging aspects for you as a conductor? Are there particular acts or even tiny moments that you find especially demanding either technically or in terms of pacing?

There are no particular moments, but the pacing and putting everything under a continuous bow is the key for this. I think about the four operas like a big symphony: Siegfried is the Scherzo, and Walküre is probably the Adagio. So from the first note of Rheingold I already have in mind the last note of Götterdämmerung. 

With your Dallas performances being semi-staged, did you find that you did things differently as opposed to in an opera house?

Actually, quite the contrary because I really could focus entirely on the music, and I didn't have to cope with the needs of staging, waiting for something or making bigger rests in between or having to change the tempo in order to make some gesture more understandable. So I really focused only on the musical terms of this work.

Whilst listening to the recording I really appreciated the amount of detail in the orchestral textures that you were able to bring out. How much time do you get to rehearse with the orchestra before the singers turn up? 

Not enough! Never enough, of course. I am very lucky that I have this orchestra which has an unbelievable ability to understand music very quickly. And so actually we only had a couple of rehearsals for each opera with just the orchestra. Most of the time we read the opera together with the singers. Despite the lack of time, nevertheless we really managed to focus on many details, and that was important.

Am I right that you did some performances earlier in the year, and then came back to it as a cycle later on?

Yes, we started like many opera houses do, so at the end of one season we did a couple of performances of the first two operas, Rheingold and Walküre. Then at the beginning of the new season, we did Siegfried and Götterdämmerung, and in one week we presented all four operas. We had a couple of rehearsals to refresh the first two from the previous season, and to present all four in a cycle. Many people came and stayed in Dallas for the week in order to be able to attend all four performances. We always had one night off in between: after a five-hour Walküre you are very happy to have a day off!

How did you go about assembling your cast of singers?

When I'm casting for an opera I want to consider first the authenticity of the voice, and whether it is good for the opera in question. So if I do Verdi, I need something authentic and really Italianate. When I do Wagner, I need singers that can articulate the words and can make understandable musically the text they are singing. But for me, it's also important to have singers where I know I can work well with them, whom I trust, and who trust me. This is important especially in this endeavour where we don't have much time to get used to each other. For me this is a very important part of being an opera conductor, that I can work with people I like, not only as singers, but as a human part of the project. 

It sounds as if not only the orchestra responded very well, but also the audience. I always wonder in a concert performance how things like the cor anglais solo in Siegfried can work, but it was gratifying to hear the audience laughter at lines such as “das tönt nicht recht”.... 

Yes, it really still worked as a theatrical experience. We had to work on that because I had to ask my cor anglais player not to play well! I said “no this is too good”, and he was reluctant not to sound good but I tried to convince him: "look, this is a very important moment, and if we don't have this kind of weird and ugly sound, it doesn't work. Please help me." And he did in the end. I'm very fortunate to have a great orchestra in Dallas. 

One of my favourite parts of Götterdämmerung is Hagen’s summoning of the vassals. As a brass player I have to ask you about the Stierhorns that Wagner uses. Could you talk about what kind of sound he had in mind for these instruments?

In my opinion, the Gibichungs are the savagest people, and so should be the sound of the Stierhorn. There's something weird, ugly, and aggressive that explains the character of this clan. So this is what I wanted, and I got it, it should be a vulgar sound as these people are.

I think people often forget how innovative Wagner was in terms of his development of instruments, obviously the Wagner tubas themselves, but also using contrabass trombone and bass trumpet. 

Yes, he tried instruments that normally do not belong to a symphony orchestra, but come from marching bands or folk music, like the bass trumpet. There are very few examples of the bass trumpet in the symphonic literature, and the sound is so distinctive. It is beautiful and noble but it has a different core sound than a normal trumpet, and it is not like a trombone. So it's really special, and this applies to the Stierhorns as well. I think in his idea of drama he tried to translate part of the characters into the instruments so that the instruments themselves explain part of the characters without words, linking a character to a particular sound. It is very cinematic actually: even if you don't hear the words, you understand the character through the music and the colours of the orchestra. 

I love the anvils in Rheingold as well, which is always a great moment. 

They were not so easy to find, getting the right instruments that sound like anvils. I remember when I was still in Graz as a vocal coach, we did The Ring and we went with the percussionist to try out train tracks! We had to try many different ones to get the pitches that we wanted.

Finally, do you have plans for any more Wagner with Dallas or any other operas?

So far we have done Strauss, Tchaikovsky, and Wagner, so I think now it is time for an Italian opera! We haven’t done one yet as it would have been a little bit of a cliché as an Italian conductor, especially as an opera conductor, to start with an Italian one. But now it’s important for my orchestra to know and understand a little bit of the Italian romantic repertoire.