It took Samantha Casolari four days to shoot the four cycles of Richard Wagner’s “Der Ring des Nibelungen” (the Ring Cycle) at New York’s famed Metropolitan Opera. Using a Canon 5D Mark II, the Italian-born, New York-based photographer and filmmaker captured the full dress rehearsals with a discerning eye and surreal predisposition. Approximately seven days of editing later, she had transformed this raw footage into what she describes as a “waking dream,” a four-minute film for the Avant/Garde Diaries that succinctly portrays the epic (16-hour-long) nature of Wagner’s magnum opus at the same time it encourages limitless viewer interpretation, and stokes the desire to see the live opera. The below film debuts today with an opening party, but we were lucky enough to secure a preview and an in-depth look into its creation.

Erin Dixon: Why did you choose the opera the “Ring Cycle” as the subject of your film?

Samantha Casolari: I took a class in German philology when I was in college and I read a lot of the Nordic sagas (Poetic Edda, Beowulf, Nibelungenlied …) based on which Wagner loosely wrote his “Ring Cycle.” I was fascinated by those stories full of heroes, dragons, both strong and vulnerable women, and otherworldly mythical creatures. They are epic and dark tales, with an incredible depth, and I found myself extremely entranced by these stories and their characters. Being attracted to Wagner’s “Cycle” was a natural consequence of this interest and when last year I read about the new “Cycle” production at the Metropolitan Opera, I knew right away I wanted to document it closely, as it managed to portray those tales I had read in such a beautiful and truthful way.

Erin: What is your favorite part of the “Ring Cycle” and why?

Samantha: I can’t really select just one part…the “Cycle” is so convoluted and elaborate and fascinating… and long (about 16 hours for the full cycle), but I can certainly say that some of my favorite parts are: the Prelude of the Cycle, showing the beginning of the world, and the Rhinemaidens (it is one of the most stunning pieces of music I have ever heard); when the Gods leave on the rainbow bridge on their way to the newly created castle, Valhalla, at the end of the first opera, Das Rheingold; the breathtaking love duet between the siblings Sieglinde and Siegmund in the first act of Die Walküre; and definitely every time the Valkyrie are on stage. These are certainly some of the parts that left me the most breathless.

Erin: What do you admire about Wagner’s work?

Samantha: Wagner’s work has a abundance of layers that is rare to find in most of his contemporaries. The “Ring Cycle,” for instance, not only talks about an epic saga but it also explores an incredible variety of themes. It portrays the birth and the death of a world, the loss of innocence, the pursuit of knowledge at all costs, the never-ending struggle of love, the extreme compromises made to gain ultimate (and somehow useless as the world’s is doomed to end anyway) power. He also anticipated a large amount of ideas that were later introduced by Carl Jung. It is a “promothean” investigation of human nature on a scope almost never seen before. And what is even more fascinating in this research is that its grandiosity is mirrored on the stage and in the music. Wagner—who wrote the music and also the libretto of the opera, which took him about 26 years to complete—envisioned choreography and stagecraft that was unparalleled at the time, but also very hard, if not impossible, to be put into life properly because of lack of adequate theatrical techniques. He, therefore, designed a opera house just for that opera, which was built in Bayreuth. It still exists and nowadays the Bayreuth Festival Theatre takes place there, and it is uniquely devoted to Wagner’s operas. He even had new tubas designed in order to play special effects that no other existing instruments could play. It is absolutely fascinating to read about this man’s megalomaniac and genius way of making art.

Erin: What is one thing that surprised you when watching the performance?

Samantha: The Machine that Robert Lepage and his team at Ex-Machina have built onstage is astonishing to see live. It so well represents the monumental nature of that opera. All through the almost 17-hour-long performance (over different nights) it, at various turns, takes the shape of a forest, the depth of the sea, a castle, a rainbow, horses ridden by the Valkyries, of the end of the world.. It is an absolutely incredible piece of engineering.

Erin: What would you like your film to communicate to the viewer?

Samantha: One of the concepts that struck me the most while researching Wagner’s opera is his way of reaching into the subconscious to gather ideas, his heavy reliance on intuition. For instance, the beautiful prelude (which I have used as soundtrack to the video and which Valentin Stip has remixed), he claims came into his head through a waking dream. That is what I tried to show by editing the video in a somehow trippy, surreal and dreamy fashion. I would like people to feel that this is a story they are actually watching inside their heads, in their subconscious, where they are meeting archetypal characters that can help bring emotions, memoirs and premonitions back to the surface in a sort of awake/visual meditation or a vivid waking dream. I have always been surrounded by lots of rationality and structures, that is why I am obsessed with anything that is the opposite of [those constraints]. Der Ring des Nibelungen is the perfect example of the infinite richness of a man’s subconscious and intuition, and it was such a incredible project to work on.

The Cycle Revealed – Narrated by Bernard Gilbert from The Avant/Garde Diaries on Vimeo.