Bieito changed many of his ideas by the time a new cast gathered last December, influenced by James Bridle’s book “New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future.” The AI machines developed in “Rheingold” will cause war in "Die Walküre," nature will rebel in “Siegfried” and characters will gather in a Wagnerian-period living room as consciousness disappears into a black hole in “Götterdämmerung.”.
Calixto Bieito turned introspective as he sat in a cafe across from the Opéra Bastille, where his production of the first night Wagner’s Ring Cycle was to premiere the following day.
Lydia Steier, a American director who moved to Germany in 2002 as a Fulbright Scholar, first met Bieito when she was an assistant stage manager in Berlin during the infamous “Abduction” production.
“If I had to describe his work during rehearsals, the three words, they would be freedom, intensity and artistic personal responsibility,” said Bettina Auer, a dramaturg who has worked with Bieito since 2009.
His 2000 production of Verdi’s “Un Ballo in Maschera (A Masked Ball)” at Barcelona’s Liceu opened with about a dozen men on toilets reading newspapers; a 2001 version of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” featuring a coke-snorting Don Juan and was booed at the English National Opera on opening night.
