Almost done

Das Rheingold is almost done by now. Wednesday we had a long day rehearing with the orchestra during the day, and with piano (and a photo shoot) in the evening, Thursday we had a really good orchestra rehearsal, and today we had our preview, which went very well. It has become very tight and touching.

Johan Reuter arrived from Madrid yesterday and went straight to a rehearsal with the piano and immediately after that to a rehearsal with the orchestra as Wotan. Highly impressive. He is really doing a superb job, so now we have two good Wotans. We have a problem with our new lumps of gold, so I think we’ll use the old ones instead. Apart from that it all fits together now.

We have just made the new correction with the lighting, so now we’re ready for the dress rehearsal on Monday. And right after that Die Walküre are staging on Tuesday – even though I haven’t been present at most of the rehearsals for it. But I’m confident that Anne, my assistant has it all under control.

Yesterday evening I was suddenly overcome by a sense of the grandeur of what we are doing. You speak about setting up the whole Ring and then - all of a sudden - I got this out-of-body experience on my way to the stage, and I realised “My God, now it is happening. This is it!” And suddenly I could see everything from the outside and I sensed a mixture of humility and arrogance! But maybe I only got the chance to think this way because we’ve had plenty of time to work on Das Rheingold. Die Walküre will be exciting but we also have an extremely tight schedule, particularly the stage technicians. But we’ll take care of that next week!