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“…a provocative but effective interpretation, in which the Knights of the Grail are struggling to hang on to life in a post-apocalyptic world (a symbolic meteorite dominates the set in Act I). It's a grim vision, but one that works with the established plot; and Lehnhoff's final suggestion of Parsifal leading the others on to a new life without the organised religion that has so patently failed them is inspiring in these over-zealous times.” BBC Music Magazine, June 2005 ****

“ Put simply, it is interpretively, vocally, instrumentally, visually and audibly a most impressive performance of Wagner's final opera...[Nagano's] generally brisk tempos, unerring sense for drama and his ability to point up crucial orchestral detail impart a feeling of urgency, of tension, of passion to the proceedings.” Classical Net

“The series was one of the last intelligent contributions to classical music by British television and, even by 1996, one suspects that only a musician of Rattle's stature and determination could have got it made… The line is unapologetically deterministic, the content confident enough to challenge: no room here for the second-rate or 'shamefully neglected'. The Tristan chord leads to the chromaticism of Elektra and inevitably to 12-tone music.” Gramophone Magazine, December 2005

“This timeless production has been universally hailed as "a monument". (France-Soir)

“Nothing ever seen before on television has given a better insight into Wagner’s genius.” (The New York Times)

“The central part of the Ring tetralogy is precisely this: a hero has been created who would actually have had all the attributes of freedom, but nobody remembered to tell him…so Siegfried remains unaware and incomplete… Mime has to be both funny and tragic – a clown like Chaplin and pathetic like a downtrodden people” (Patrice Chéreau)

“The videotaped Bayreuth Ring succeeds triumphantly” (Time).

‘Pierre Audi’s Ring really shines!’ Wagner Society, NL

“The Pierre Audi Amsterdam Ring wholly justifies Opus Arte's decision to follow up so soon its uneven Harry Kupfer/Barcelona cycle. Audi and designer George Tsypin work with a varying series of thrillingly lit (Wolfgang Goebbel) acting areas, Hartmut Haenchen's orchestra(s) constantly visible in a manner reminiscent of Baroque theatre. There may be reservations about Haenchen's straight, low-profile interpretation of the music (given in the new critical edition, here featuring colourful percussion and sound effects, and some new brass pitches at the opening of Act 3 of Götterdämmerung), or the harshness of Eiko Ishioka's far from conventionally beautiful Japanese theatrical costumes. But there can surely be few about the freshness of Audi's theatrical thinking, and his reinvention of 'deconstructionist' effects – Fafner as his own mouth; a fierily lit and smoked platform to walk into; or the Wanderer's spear presented for Siegfried to break as a huge, ceiling-high, world ash tree-like totem.
The visible Woodbird (at last, as Wagner wished, taken by a boy) with his white, waif-like cockade of hair is also a moving presence, especially at the violent death of Mime.
Audi has cast and used his singing actors well.
Altmeyer goes from strength to strength, proving how right she was that Brünnhilde was her role. Clark delivers another variation on his widely travelled Mime, now older, more worried, perhaps more frightening. Gjevang, a matchless Erda, then unveils a Waltraute that for textual understanding, projection and sheer intensity you'd have to have on a desert island.
Her Act 1 colleagues in Götterdämmerung – Rydl's neurotic, exhibitionist Hagen and the identical-looking Sebastian/Viola incestuous Gibichungs of Bundschuh and Schöne – provide compulsive acting too. And when Siegfried comes to the rock with the tarnhelm? You'll have to see (and hear!) for yourself.
A black mark, though, to Opus Arte for forgetting (totally) the chorus in Götterdämmerung – viewers intrigued by their Cuprinoladvertisement wooden-puppet look may want to know who they are. The Netherlands Philharmonic lack, in the final pages of Götterdämmerung, the necessary lustrous string tone; in Siegfried, their Rotterdam colleagues are idiomatically magnificent. If you're buying individually, the Audi Götterdämmerung is mandatory.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010