Cable clutter and the bionic man

Calixto Bieito directs Das Rheingold in Paris (*****) [live]

Opening scene with Alberich and the Rhine maidens © Herwig Prammer | OnP

There is no doubt, in The Ring of the Nibelung Richard Wagner wanted to embody the demonic spirit of the industrial age. The technological progress to which nineteenth-century society so lightly indulges, he regards with suspicion. As a romantic artist, he refuses to resign himself to the disenchantment of the world, which he sees as the inevitable result of rationalization, technology and economic calculation.