The Golden Ring

Overview

Watching the Vienna Philharmonic, Georg Solti, and a stellar cast record Wagner's immense Götterdämmerung for Decca in the fall of 1964 provides a thousand lessons in the art of working under pressure. For this classic documentary, The Golden Ring, a BBC camera crew eavesdropped as producer John Culshaw guided his engineering team through tricky technical maneuvers far removed from the relative ease of modern digital editing. What utter concentration and focus Birgit Nilsson, Wolfgang Windgassen, Gottlob Frick, and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau bring to their collective and individual singing! Solti, for his part, oozes energy and exactitude as he pleads for greater precision and frets over details in the car en route to the sessions.

Directed by Humphrey Burton

Top cast

B

Birgit Nilsson

Herself - Singer (Brunhilde)

W

Wolfgang Windgassen

Himself - Singer (Siegfried)

G

Gottlob Frick

Himself - Singer (Hagen)

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

Himself - Singer (Gunther)

C

Claire Watson

Herself - Singer (Gertrune)

Georg Solti

Himself - The Conductor

J

John Culshaw

Himself - The Recording Team

G

Gordon Parry

Himself - The Recording Team

J

James Brown

Himself - The Recording Team

C

Christopher Raeburn

Himself - The Recording Team

J

Jack Law

Himself - The Recording Team

E

Erik Smith

Himself - The Recording Team

H

Humphrey Burton

Himself - Narrator

Details