Welcome to Ring Festival LA!

 

The Los Angeles Opera's groundbreaking production of Richard Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung in June 2010 has created a great opportunity. Between April 15 and June 30, 2010, the Los Angeles Region will celebrate this production by assembling Ring Festival LA, the most interdisciplinary, cross-cultural, collaborative artistic and cultural event to occur anywhere. We are bringing together a multitude of different companies, thinkers, curators and performers to program on themes related to the Ring. Doing this in a coordinated way breaks new ground and tears down the walls that usually isolate different disciplines and different people.

Consider some of the variety of what has already been defined: 

• The LA County Museum of Art will mount a show around German myths from its stellar holdings of German art.
• The Huntington Library will display George Bernard Shaw's extensive works on Wagner and his music from their definitive Shaw collection.
• Patina Restaurants all over town will stage a continuing German Food Festival.
• The Griffith Observatory will theme a show in the Planetarium that will run the entire Festival to the sound of "The Ride of the Valkyries."
• Grand Performances will present a new Wagner-inspired hip-hop work by "Double G," Geoff Gallegos, and his daKAH Hip Hop Orchestra.
• Dr. Antonio Damasio's Brain and Creativity Institute at USC will hold a symposium among neuroscientists, musicians and anthropologists on the Ring.
• And so much more!

All of this is being organized, coordinated and publicized locally and worldwide under the leadership of Los Angeles Opera. Why do we and our partners do this? It will increase recognition throughout the world of the cultural prominence and excellence of Southern California. It will alert people everywhere to a great new, groundbreaking production of the Ring by the Los Angeles Opera. It will attract Ring visitors to Los Angeles who will attend the performances and spend the rest of the week visiting our Ring Festival LA partners and the whole Los Angeles area.

Perhaps most important, Ring Festival LA builds a sense of community in Los Angeles. Ours is a disparate, diverse, experimental city - divided and separated in so many ways. To bind the community together, we seek opportunities to share common experiences. What makes this a great city is what happens here. We intend this to be a celebration felt by everyone, with a program that is entertaining as well as enlightening. We hope and expect that all the people of Los Angeles will experience and embrace it.

Please come to the party!

Barry A. Sanders
Leader of Ring Festival LA