Puppetry in The Ring
by Lisa Aimee Sturz

Puppetry is often used to express our mythic sagas. With roots in folklore and magic, puppets are simultaneously animate and inanimate. They are the perfect vessel to bring audiences across the divide between reality and imagination.

Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen or The Ring

The Ring, based on German and Norse legends, is a four-part opera spanning 151⁄2 hours over several days. It features supernatural elements and characters such as gods, dragons, dwarves, giants, and a coveted gold ring that holds the fate of the world.

The musical score, which took Wagner 26 years to complete, demands a mega-sized orchestra. Only a rare breed of singer has the range, tonal quality, and vocal stamina to repeatedly perform this operatic marathon. There are Wagner enthusiasts who follow The Ring around the world.

In several stagings of this epic theatrical production, puppets have played a pivotal role.

The Lyric Opera of Chicago

In 1993, the Lyric Opera of Chicago began their multi-year journey to produce the The Ring. They put together a renowned production team, which included Zubin Mehta (conductor), August Everding (director), John Conklin (designer), Duane Schuler (lighting), and Debra Brown (choreographer) from Cirque du Soleil. They enlisted several of the world’s top Wagnerian singers.

The plan was to launch one opera each year and then present the entire cycle in suc- cession. It sold out seven months in advance.

For the first opera, Das Rheingold, Debra created an amazing underwater sequence with Rhinemaidens somersaulting through the ocean on bungee cords as the dwarf Alberich tried to gain their affection. Later in the opera, they used shadow puppets to portray Alberich transforming into a dragon and frog.

Das Rheingold met with mixed reviews. While the music was “superior” according to the New York Times, reviewers were critical of the shadow puppet sequence.

For the second opera Die Walküre, mounted the following year, Debra choreographed the famous Ride of the Valkyries with costumed gymnasts leaping into the air, throwing spears with musical precision. She did this by hiding a row of trampolines behind low mountains in the foreground. It was a huge success.

But opera number three, Siegfried, requires the giant Fafner to transform into a monumental dragon. While vocal performances are critical, how the giant dragon is represented is a standard measure of success for any production of The Ring. Given the underwhelming dragon effect in Das Rheingold, The Lyric determined to upgrade their production by adding a Puppetmaster to the team. Debra Brown, who had seen several of my previous productions, recommended me.

Francisco Carter is an undergraduate student at the University of Washington. He attended his first UNImA Congress in Chengdu at the age of ten. Now nineteen, he has just finished his junior year majoring in anthropology. His work seeks to apply an anthropological approach to the research and documentation of international puppetry traditions.

Entering “The Ring”

When I got the call, I took a deep breath, smiled broadly, and booked a flight to Chicago. With little time to prepare, I uploaded the music to my laptop and read a comic book version of The Ring Cycle on the plane. I met with the production team for several days and studied the libretto at night. I was brought onboard to animate a forty-foot dragon, revisit the dragon/frog sequence in Das Rheingold, and create puppet effects for several other scenes.

The Dragon

The Lyric’s overall design concept embraced a quasi- feudal Japanese aesthetic with sparse lines and saturated color. John had some preliminary sketches for the giant dragon but did not know how to make it move. We came up with a segmented figure whose mouth could open and close and whose claws could crawl and scrape through the air. The separate pieces allowed us to lower the weight of individual sections while providing a dramatic opportunity for the puppet to explode across the stage when struck by Siegfried’s fatal blow.

John knew a scene shop in Brooklyn that could construct the figure from lightweight carbon fiber. Knowing I would have a team of seventeen puppeteers, I noted where to attach rods to best animate the beast. Then the specs were sent to the scene shop.

Supporting the Music

With the dragon’s design and construction settled, it was now time to choreograph its movements to the libretto. The musical currents are integral to the story, so it takes an aficionado to understand their symbolism and depth. For this expertise, I turned to a well-informed musical friend, Gwenn Roberts.

Gwenn loaned me a book about the Jungian interpretation of the E-flat chord, which introduces the main theme of power. She read through the libretto with me and identified specific musical inferences, leitmotifs, sound effects, and measures of extreme emotion that Wagner had thoughtfully written into the score. I listened to the flamboyant orchestration for hours, envisioning the battle. Then I plotted the scenes, measure by measure, shaping the dragon’s movements leading up to the explosive climax.

Casting and Rehearsal

I cast the puppeteers based on size, strength, musicianship, and puppet sensitivity. They needed to play their instrument as skillfully as any musician in the orchestra. And they needed to work together as a tight ensemble. For example, a slight tilt of the head had to resonate through to the tail.

We created a physical vocabulary that included breathing, thinking, creeping, rising, and recoiling. We practiced a slow approach over the horizon. It took eight puppeteers to raise the dragon’s head to open and close its jaw. We devised a traffic pattern for the dragon to rupture from Siegfried’s sword strike and scatter to the far corners of the stage.

The stage manager helped us time our movements to match the conductor’s tempo. Once we were confident with our routine, we brought in the tenor. Slaying a dragon with a longsword while singing the complicated score requires a sublime mix of capabilities. We staged the dragon to make Siegfried look heroic with the least amount of physical exertion.

The Forest Bird

The scene just before Siegfried slays the dragon is a pastoral moment set in a forest clearing. Siegfried communes with a woodland bird to achieve the mental fortitude needed for his epic battle. We wanted the bird to appear unexpectedly from different parts of the stage to give it a numinous quality. I created two similar origami- looking birds out of a lightweight condensed foam. Each was manipulated by an identical twin dancing on the ground. The audience could not tell the figures (or their manipulators) apart as one flew in, surprising Siegfried from behind seconds after flying off in front of him. To create a sense of Siegfried’s intrepid resolve at the close of Act Two, the dancer holding the bird soared up and across the stage on a belted apparatus suspended from a track high above.

The Fire Dragon

Based on the success of the puppetry in Siegfried, I was asked to improve the dragon sequence in Das Rheingold. In the script, the dwarf Alberich uses the powerful ring to force the enslaved Nibelungs to mine vast quantities of gold. Wotan (King of the gods) and Loge (God of fire) visit him to steal the ring.

Alberich is cocky and likes to show off his power. He transforms himself into a dragon to impress them. They taunt him by asking if his power is enough to become something small. When he turns into a frog, Wotan and Loge capture him along with the ring and the gold.

I designed sixteen two-dimensional pieces to look like fire and a jointed frog. The plywood panels were painted with ultraviolet on one side and black on the reverse. The lighting designer hung an arsenal of blacklights for the desired effect. As the gods approached, Alberich summoned small fires to appear and disappear about the stage to amaze his guests. On a musical cue (that Zubin playfully added to his conductor’s repertoire), the pieces instantly came together to form a dazzling fire dragon. And just as quickly, dissolved into a frog.

The Giants

Das Rheingold is also inhabited by the giants Fafner and Fasolt. For these colossal beings, the Lyric had built two 16- foot rod figures, each operated by three puppeteers. Their large foam hands, wearing red leather gloves, were housed inside a skeletal metal structure. The singers portraying the giants wore a similar pair of red gloves and stood in front of their giant doppelgängers. When the actors left their proximity, the giant figures still loomed over the action. I took over as manipulation coach and created synchronized movements to animate the characters at moments of heightened emotion.

For the final opera, Götterdämmerung, I created a similar figure to represent Fafner after his dragon-self is slain by Siegfried. He turns back into his giant-form to die. The head was similar, but the body was flushed out with shape and fabric to give him a more corporeal essence. The puppet sank below the horizon of the set as the singer sang his final words in a glowing red light.

A Dream Come True

Working on this production of The Ring was a dream job. I was asked to invoke the magical power of puppetry to dramatize a legendary opera in one of the finest opera houses in the US. For me, this was a gift from the gods.

I still smile when remembering the thunderous bravos from the audiences when Fafner enters as a dragon. I cherish the New York Times review from 1996 entitled: “Going up against the Dragon.” They declared our dragon “must have satisfied even the wildest expectations.”2

But the first onstage rehearsal with a full orchestra is still my most precious memory. I grew up near New York City. In my family, Zubin Mehta was a household name. When it was time for us to present the big dragon scene to the production staff, Zubin sent his assistant to the conductor’s box, and came to the production table in the center of the opera house for an optimal view. We delivered one of those rare, near-perfect first rehearsals. Zubin jumped up and down applauding the dragon, and then gave me a big hug!

That was a dream come true.

Lisa Sturz is the Founder and Artistic Director of Red Herring Puppets, an award-winning puppet company specializing in custom fabrication and curriculum-based productions. Lisa has created figures for the Field Museum, Shedd Aquarium, Asheville Symphony, Silver Dollar City Theme Park, Tucson’s Children’s Museum and many more. Screen credits include: Elmo in Grouchland, Muppets from Space, Howard the Duck, the Flintstones, Ninja Turtles 3, RoboCop2 and Batman Returns. Lisa’s production of My Grandfather’s Prayers, airing internationally on JLTV, received a 2021 Telly Award.

Endnotes
1 www.nytimes.com/1993/02/09/arts/review-opera-the-lyric-in-chicago-starts-its-ring-html
2 www.nytimes.com/1995/02/04/arts/opera-review-going-up-against-the-dragon.html