Marking a milestone, Arizona Opera revisits Wagner epic

Arizona Opera is closing out its 2017-18 season this weekend with Wagner’s “Das Rheingold,” the first installment of the German composer’s epic four-opera “Der Ring des Nibelungen” cycle.

The production marks the anniversary of the company’s milestone 1998 performance in Flagstaff of the full cycle that won the company, under then director Glynn Ross, critical acclaim and national attention.

This weekend’s production includes multimedia accents — video sets and special effects that add depth to the staging and allows the audience to get lost in the forest and deep in the waters with Wagner’s gods and demigods as they battle for control and power.

We caught up with Grammy-winning baritone Richard Paul Fink, who sings the role of Alberich, the spurned dwarf who sets off the power struggle after he steals the Rhinemaidens’ gold. The maidens had told him that the gold held magical powers, but only if you swore off love. Not a hard call for Alberich, who was not exactly winning the ladies over.

Fink, who guested with True Concord Voices & Orchestra in early 2017 to sing the lead in Mendelssohn’s oratorio “Elijah,” has sung the Wagner role no less than 130 to 150 times, he said during a phone call last week from rehearsals in Phoenix.

“I always find little new doors, little new ways of approaching and delivering a line,” he said.

We asked Fink why we should take out 2½ hours of our weekend to see this production, and he gave us a few pretty enticing reasons.

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The full Wagner: Director Brian Stauffenbiel employs multimedia elements to create spectacular and sometimes dark and haunting effects that will make you feel like you’re at the bottom of the Rhine River or deep in a forest.

Close to the action: Stauffenbiel also places the full Wagnerian orchestra on stage with the actors, pushing much of the action stage front over the pit that normally houses the instrumentalists. “Which makes it a great way to communicate with the audience.” Fink said.

First came “The Ring,” then came “Lord of the Rings,” “The Avengers” and every Marvel Comics superhero to follow: You ask Fink and he will tell you that Wagner set the stage for all the comic book super heroes and mythological fantasies including J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. Wagner composed “Der Ring des Nibelungern” 50 years before Tolkien wrote his epic tale, and while so-called Tolkiens will protest loudly, Fink said both works follow the same Norse mythology right down to similar names for their superheroes/gods.

“A lot of the Tolkien folks deny it and say there was no crossover at all,” Fink said. “But there are way too many parallels.”

Then there’s the music, the drama, the sheer crazy: “The drama, the story, the power of the music, they are all there. Opera as the unifier of all art forms is in this piece and in this production, and it’s presented in a very, very powerful way.”

Fink is in good company: “Arizona Opera has amassed a phenomenal, phenomenal cast. ... You have cast members here that have done multiple, multiple productions of this opera and will be taking it to a whole other level. The talent on this stage is bar none.”