Jerry Floyd, Cooking the ‘Ring’: Francesca Zambello on her production for San Francisco

July 2011, Volume 5, Number 2, 63–9.

‘Ring cycles take a long time to cook’, noted the opera and theatre director Francesca Zambello late last year as she and her production team looked forward to the three Ring cycles performed by the San Francisco Opera (SFO) in June and July. Since the cycle will be reviewed in a future issue of The Wagner Journal, this article focuses on the production’s evolution, its principal themes and the director’s work with cast members, especially Nina Stemme (Brünnhilde) and Gordon Hawkins (Alberich).