“The attention is ‘to make Wagner accessible to a wider audience.’” David Kram, Artistic Director, More Than Opera. 

Last week on the 5 June I attended another worthy but very different operatic event. This was More Than Opera’s imaginative compression of Wagner’s fifteen-hour Ring Cycle reduced to a mere 90 minutes. 

Artistic Director David Kram’s reimagined BrunnhAilde concert featured three fantastic singers who sang multiple roles and the critical and most loved arias accompanied by a saxophone quintet and a piano. 

A remarkable scaling down of the accompanying forces given that a Wagnerian Orchestra ranges from between 90 to 100 players. 

The ensemble proved to be an ingenious invention because saxophones can sound like brass or string instruments and there was a huge range from soprano to bass available in the excellent arrangements by Kram the ensemble admirably functioned well as a Greek chorus commenting on the drama and story narrated by Melissa Madden Gray whose storytelling connected to the operatic hits. 

BrunnhAilde will be a touring show once the AI accompanying film is complete. 

You can read more of my writing about the BrunnhAilde concert at Limelight Arts, here.