Die Walkure, Gustavo Dudamel and Frank Gehry attempt Wagner history at Disney Hall

Richard Wagner’s “The Ring of the Nibelung” has been probing the morality of powerfulness and possession for a period and a half. The composer designed a revolutionary theatre for the four-night epic successful the provincial German municipality of Bayreuth. And this summertime Wagnerites volition ascent the Green Hill to the Festival House for a 150th day accumulation of what remains the top immersive acquisition connected the satellite — and the astir daunting theatrically and musically to execute.

“Die Walküre,” the 2nd opera successful the tetralogy, is Gustavo Dudamel’s past expansive task of his tenure arsenic Los Angeles Philharmonic euphony director, and past play Walt Disney Concert Hall became an L.A. Bayreuth.

The Bayreuth acquisition encompasses not conscionable the accumulation and show but besides a consciousness of spot and purpose. It becomes a pilgrimage. You participate a antithetic world. The orchestral dependable comes retired of a hidden pit arsenic though from the ether. You are expected to beryllium successful worshipful, soundless awe for hours. Yet that antithetic satellite whitethorn crook retired to correspond the 1 you person left.

The past Bayreuth “Ring” looked similar a Netflix bid taking spot successful a modernist woodsy villa. This summertime the festival promises (or threatens?) that the signifier imagery for its caller day accumulation will, for the archetypal time, beryllium generated by AI.

Disney couldn’t beryllium little similar that. Frank Gehry said helium designed it to beryllium Los Angeles’ surviving room. Yet the acceptable helium designed for “Walküre” soon earlier helium died successful December nevertheless captured Wagner’s immersive essence. Large, irregular, corpuscular clouds made of crumpled insubstantial hung implicit the stage. They were strikingly lit, making them travel alive. For the 3rd act, which opens with the celebrated “Ride of the Valkyries,” Gehry designed insubstantial sculpture horses successful antithetic poses of question that, though stationary, activated the stage.

The effect was to alteration an iconic abstraction that has go a awesome of L.A.’s clasp of entity and nature, of bringing the extracurricular inside.

Two years ago, for a caller accumulation of “Das Rheingold,” the archetypal “Ring” opera, Gehry had designed a semi-pit for the orchestra successful Disney and an elevated signifier connected the organ loft. This clip helium went further, turning the woody organ pipes, oregon “French fries,” into a tree. The afloat effect was a Gehry wonderland.

Wagner has ever been indispensable to L.A. His consciousness of communicative and sonics began influencing Hollywood arsenic aboriginal arsenic the soundless epoch and has ne'er ceased. John Williams’ gloriously Wagnerian soundtracks helped motorboat the never-ending “Star Wars” sagas.

Gustavo Dudamel conducts the Los Angeles Philharmonic successful Act 3 of Wagner’s “Die Walküre”

(Jennifer McCord / For The Times)

Gehry and Williams besides hap to beryllium the 2 top L.A. artists with whom Dudamel became closest during his L.A. tenure. The mode Dudamel designed his L.A. Phil “Ring” project, which helium has been obsessed with for the past decennary and hopes to complete, is an only-in-L.A. monument. (His last Disney amusement of the play is June 7, but adjacent aft helium departs for New York, and Daniel Harding takes implicit arsenic euphony director, helium expects to instrumentality for abbreviated stints.)

In the summertime of 2022, Dudamel staged the 3rd enactment of “Walküre” astatine the Hollywood Bowl with green-screen video technology, allowing characters to look similar they were racing done abstraction connected motorcycles successful a video game. Staged by Yuval Sharon, it became a modern-day instrumentality connected the L.A. Phil’s historical staging astatine the Hollywood Bowl a period earlier. That 1 had unrecorded horses, framing the venue arsenic a spot for the grandest of spectacles. Sharon besides happened to person been the adjunct of Achim Freyer, who staged Los Angeles Opera’s uniquely imaginative “Ring” successful 2010. That led Sharon to past recovered the Industry and signifier the echt-Wagnerian epic “Hopscotch,” turning L.A.’s streets and parks into an epic stage.

At Disney, erstwhile much and much profusely than ever, the abstraction became the place. The orchestra successful its pit, with nary risers, inhabited the hall. Dudamel conducted arsenic if transfixed. Raw erstwhile helium needed tempest oregon battle; other excited erstwhile Valkyries cavorted with horses; effusive erstwhile emotion took implicit senses; tender erstwhile morality mattered. Unlike surround-sound successful movie theaters which pinpoints directionality, the effect present was diffusion — not eavesdropping but axenic immersion.

The accumulation by the movie manager Alberto Arvelo was not elaborate drama. Gods were lofty gods, not you and me. They mostly stood connected the elevated stage, but occasionally came down to the catwalk successful beforehand of the orchestra. Cindy Figueroa’s costumes made them exotic figures.

Ryan Speedo Green’s Wotan made the king of the gods an exceptional presence. His dignity is impenetrable. His lust for powerfulness has bizarre ramifications. That includes siring twins who autumn successful emotion — their child, a expected hero.

Green’s dependable radiated powerfulness and defiance, warring disconnected the compassion helium knows volition spell his end. Christine Goerke, a glorious Brünnhilde (as she besides was astatine the Bowl), filled the hallway and hearts. Jessica Faselt and Jamez McCorkle arsenic the twins Sieglinde and Siegmund, on with Soloman Howard arsenic the frightening Hunding, made the much lyrical archetypal enactment glow.

But it was the large picture, the consciousness successful Disney of our ain environment, that made this “Walküre” singular. It’s a caller Wagner for our clip and spot and begs for continuation done the afloat cycle.