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Deutsche Welle

With the Richard Wagner Festival in Bayreuth looming large, you can expect to hear about celebrity visitors to the festival in the days ahead, as well as festival tradition and change, controversy in the Wagner clan, and of course Nibelungs, gods, betrayal and transfiguration in the Wagnerian music dramas themselves. Pretty heavy stuff, but after all, Richard Wagner’s opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen has been called the most ambitious work of art ever created.

We’d like to lighten up the whole Wagnerian business this thirty minutes and sample a musical that in Deutsche Welle’s home city of Bonn has been quite a hit. Now imagine the son of a famous Wagnerian singer writing a musical on the "Ring." Sounds like something from a different drama, the one that gave rise to the term "Oedipus complex." This, however, is more than an issue of a son atoning for the sins of the father. Frank Nimsgern is the composer of Der Ring – Das Musical, which our host Rick Demarest has been to several times.

by Richard Wagner:

• Ride of the Valkyries from Die Walküre, with the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra; conductor: Karl Böhm on 05064 SPECTRUM 5502492
• Overture to Das Rheingold, with the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra; conductor: Pierre Boulez on 05064 SPECTRUM 5502492
• Conclusion to Das Rheingold, with the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra; conductor: Pierre Boulez on 00305 Philips 4344212

by Frank Nimsgern, excerpts from Der Ring – Das Musical, released on 05064 SPECTRUM 5502492:

• Steig hinab kleiner Mann, with vocalist Darius Merstein
• Der Ring der Macht, with vocalist Frank Felicetti
• Dreifach die Triebe, with vocalist Maricel
• Sei wie du bist, with vocalists Maricel and Darius Merstein
• Lass es Liebe sein, with vocalists Aino Loos and Serkan Kaya
• Der Spieler, with vocalists Aino Loos, Darius Merstein and Maricel

other performers:

Frank Nimsgern, Michel Duc, Achim Schneider, Jan Kamp, Steve Grant, Steve Smith and Nico Berthold