In Search of an Ending: Matthew Rye concludes his reports on Karlsruhe’s multi-director ‘Ring’ with an assessment of a ‘Götterdämmerung’ that keeps its audience guessing until the very end

Review of Götterdämmerung, directed Kratzer, conducted Brown, Karlsruhe, 2017.

March 2018, Volume 12, Number 1, 81–3.

I should begin this review by warning that it contains spoilers, for anyone who might be venturing to Karlsruhe for its complete cycles this spring and who doesn’t want to know how it all ends … Though in one sense, the Badisches Staatstheater’s multi-director Ring ends rather as it began in Das Rheingold, with a production of Götterdämmerung that is similarly and refreshingly irreverent, and engages with the score and text in innovative ways. Although the intention of the project has in part presumably been to present standalone versions of each component of the cycle that work both singly and as a whole, Tobias Kratzer’s ideas evidently and deliberately feed off the work of his predecessors.