The Golden Ring

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.

Cast

Birgit Nilsson

Birgit Nilsson

as Herself - Singer (Brunhilde)

Wolfgang Windgassen

Wolfgang Windgassen

as Himself - Singer (Siegfried)

Gottlob Frick

Gottlob Frick

as Himself - Singer (Hagen)

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

as Himself - Singer (Gunther)

Claire Watson

Claire Watson

as Herself - Singer (Gertrune)

Georg Solti

Georg Solti

as Himself - The Conductor

John Culshaw

John Culshaw

as Himself - The Recording Team

Gordon Parry

Gordon Parry

as Himself - The Recording Team

James Brown

James Brown

as Himself - The Recording Team

Christopher Raeburn

Christopher Raeburn

as Himself - The Recording Team

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