‘The Ring at Grand Canyon’ Kicks Off Cultural Super Bowl

Hardly known as a major center of opera, Arizona will be catapulted into the company of New York and San Francisco with its production of Richard Wagner’s epic four-opera, “Der Ring des Nibelungen.”

The 16-hour Ring cycle, which features the well-known “Ride of the Valkyries,” brings the operatic legend of world creation and divine battles to Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff in June.

“No one expects this to be done in Arizona,” says Glynn Ross, who helped popularize Wagner in the United States by staging complete Ring cycles in Seattle for 10 consecutive years.

Ross, Arizona Opera’s general director, is calling this “the Ring at the Grand Canyon.” He envisioned staging the grandiose work nearby when he first saw the Grand Canyon from a plane in 1983.

“I thought: God has given us the Grand Canyon--man should try to do something to reach that both spiritually and monumentally. I didn’t know anything more monumental than the Ring. It’s about life, death and redemption.”

The four operas in the Ring cycle chronicle the plight of gods and mortals, and their greed to possess a gold ring that enables its wearer to dominate the world with supernatural powers.

The only American companies that have staged the Ring cycle operas consecutively and continued in business are those in New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Seattle. A company in Boston drove itself into bankruptcy with the Ring.

The Grand Canyon production, which will be presented twice, each time four nights in one week, is costing about two-thirds of Arizona Opera’s $3.6-million operating budget. Opera fans from Germany, Japan, Portugal, Britain and 39 states already have signed up for tickets, says Monica Barrows, an Arizona Opera spokeswoman.

Barrows says the Ring is the cultural equivalent of the Super Bowl, which Arizona will be hosting for the first time today.

“The Super Bowl is going to be a multimillion [dollar] boost--now we also have a cultural boost that’s going to bring Arizona into the international limelight,” she says.

The Flagstaff performances are expected to bring about $12 million into Arizona’s economy.

Dr. Kenneth Ryan, an Arizona Opera board member and health science professor at the University of Arizona, compared the production to the fictional Iowa farmer’s construction of a baseball field in the movie “Field of Dreams.”

“If you don’t build it, they won’t come,” he says. “For a company even to put on a production of the Ring cycle raises eyebrows.”

Ross calls Flagstaff, the opera site, “Bayreuth with pine trees”--a reference to the German city where the Ring was first produced in 1876.

Northern Arizona University is redoing the orchestra pit for the Ring, modeling it on Bayreuth. Ross says, “I was so enthused I was practically dancing.”

Ross first encountered the Ring 41 years ago, when he strapped his infant son on his back, papoose-style, leaving both hands free to turn pages of the Ring’s music scores. His Italian-born wife was studying to become a U.S. citizen at Hollywood High School and Ross was at home, baby-sitting and preparing to go to Bayreuth. He worked with Bayreuth’s production crew and observed Ring staging close up.

There, he says, “I was moved in a manner I’d never been moved before.”

After staging opera in Los Angeles and Italy, Ross became head of the Seattle Opera. He staged his first Ring there in 1975. It was the first time in the United States that all four operas were performed within one week, the way Wagner wanted.

After nearly 20 years in Seattle, Ross was told to leave by a committee that, he says, decided it wanted somebody younger. “It is a special pleasure now for me to be doing what I’m doing 12 years later, at 81,” Ross says.

Ross is known in the opera world as a feisty man who won’t spend money he doesn’t have. When he was hired to head the Arizona Opera, Ross says, “There had been 13 years of constant deficit. Now we have 12 years of no deficit.”

One of his first advertising campaigns put “Get Mixed Up in Opera” signs on cement trucks.

The Ring at the Grand Canyon will have no high-priced stars. But, Ross says, there are people who can sing the difficult roles very well and he has found them.

Ross wants the audience to concentrate on the music and the mythology. Instead of constructed scenery, the Arizona Ring will use abstract projections.

“I felt to do the Ring, one must get away from the world,” Ross says. “You’ve involved yourself in a territory you rarely have before: life, death, redemption, good, bad, evil, virtue.

“By relieving the eye, you open the ear.”

Ross believes that mythology, told in the Ring, is the spiritual history of mankind.

The Arizona opera will perform the Ring cycle on June 3, 4, 6 and 8, and June 10, 11, 13 and 15. Tickets range from $100 to $525.

Henry Holt will conduct.

Flagstaff is also a prime tourist location, with the Grand Canyon, Painted Desert and the red rocks of Sedona just hours away. Arizona Opera is offering excursions to the Grand Canyon, Sedona, Sunset Crater Volcano and Flagstaff’s Indian arts community during the Ring weeks.