“Many threads of my life come together here”
Kirill Petrenko on Wagner’s “Rheingold” in Salzburg “Many threads of my life come together here”Kirill Petrenko on Wagner’s “Rheingold” in Salzburg

Kirill Petrenko has been engaged with Wagner’s Ring des Nibelungen for 30 years. He has conducted the cycle in Meiningen, at the Bayreuth Festival and at the Bavarian National Opera. This new Rheingold, as the opening instalment of a new complete Ring under his baton, marks the return of the Berliner Philharmoniker to the Salzburg Easter Festival. At a press conference following the final dress rehearsal, the Chief Conductor spoke about this monumental project.

Asked what these weeks of preparation had meant to him, Kirill Petrenko replied: “This is my whole life”.  A circle, he said, was closing. It begins with the location: “Austria is my adopted home. I grew up musically here. I absorbed Austrian culture in Vienna during my training, and in Vorarlberg, where my family lived, I came to know Austria as a land of music from an early age.” A Ring in Austria is, for him, an expression of gratitude: “To give something back to this country, which has given me so much, is an extraordinarily beautiful opportunity.”

This Ring cycle is a uniquely personal milestone for Kirill Petrenko. He has been engaged with the work, which has marked defining moments throughout his conducting career, for decades; and now he can collaborate on the tetralogy with the Berliner Philharmoniker. This Ring will undoubtedly mark a high point in their partnership. “To realise this work with my orchestra in my adopted home weaves together many threads of my life,” Petrenko says.

From a Salzburg perspective, there is a further distinction: for the very first time, Wagner’s Ring is being performed in the Felsenreitschule — an extraordinary venue that once hosted equestrian displays and has been used for theatre and opera productions since 1926. The Felsenreitschule is perhaps best known for the imposing arcaded galleries that form its stage backdrop. Kirill Petrenko is “personally quite captivated” by this space — not least thanks to its acoustics, which allow an optimal exchange of sound between stage and orchestra pit. “In rehearsals, the singers tell me again and again how well they can hear me and the orchestra,” he says — “better than is usually the case.” The orchestra members, for their part, say precisely the same about the audibility of the singers.

The archaic atmosphere of the Felsenreitschule fits seamlessly into the directorial concept of Kirill Serebrennikov, who brings a mythic, post-apocalyptic context to the stage. Kirill Petrenko has followed the stage rehearsals from the outset and is visibly impressed: “Kirill Serebrennikov has a very powerful vision of the piece. I see him as someone who wants to provoke, who thinks spectacularly. I have always championed approaches of that kind.”

Like the venue and the production, the cast brings fresh perspectives. The aim in assembling the ensemble was to present a new Ring cast — singers who have never, or rarely, interpreted these roles before. Kirill Petrenko is firmly convinced by this approach: “Of course you grow with a work and with a role; you grow into it. That can take years. But Wagner wanted change, too.” It is important to Petrenko to draw on Wagner’s own recorded remarks about interpretation, which often diverge from received tradition — a reorientation best undertaken with fresh voices, since, he says: “At the beginning of a journey, you are at your most flexible.”

This flexibility is something Kirill Petrenko has also experienced in his work with the Berliner Philharmoniker: “This time I was able to realise more musical ideas than ever before — because the orchestra is fantastic, but does not play these works every year. It was open to what I proposed, and that made the realisation easier.”

There remains the much-debated matter of balance between the ensemble on stage and the enormous orchestra. Kirill Petrenko recalls that the composer himself had grappled with precisely this challenge: “Wagner always said: the orchestra should bear the singer as an ocean bears a small boat. The poetic text comes first; the orchestra tells the drama through motifs and harmony on another level.” There are, of course, moments in the Ring where the orchestra engulfs the singers. “But that is all right — it may well be Wagner’s intention. And when the wave has passed, the little boat resurfaces.”