2025 stock The Ring Orchestra is an eight-person effort, a collective coming together to tackle opera and one of the genre’s controversial poster boys. In 18 compositions, the artists Born in Flamez, Gil Schneider, Simonne Jones, Leo Luchini, Legion Seven, P.A. Hülsenbeck, Isa GT, and Ixa create a collaborative musical score that uses Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen as the point of departure. Far from being an affirmative tribute, the orchestra sets out to deconstruct and break down what Wagner and his opus magnum represent: collaboration over singularity and openness instead of conservative rigidity. The resulting score doesn’t shy away from ambivalence by decentralizing authorship and encompassing everything from ambient to pop, reggaeton, and a wider variety of non-western musical influences. In addition to the musical material, the double LP contains a text that reflects on the project, its genesis, and significance. Thoughts and elaborations by the eight contributors are collaged with the help of an artificial intelligence, resulting in the dissolution of singular voices or opinions and further questioning the notion of the “genius.”

The Ring Orchestra came together to create the music for a staging of Der Ring des Nibelungen at Schauspielhaus Zürich, directed by Christopher Rüping and written by Necati Öziri. They, meaning everyone involved, ventured out to “correct” Wagner’s monster, full of otherworldly music and deep-seated hatred, full of fervent storms of love and hardcore racism, full of a deep reverence for nature and for Darwin’s blood ideology. The musicians Black Cracker and Jonas Holle assembled an orchestra of independent musicians, countering Wagner’s one-man show with a polyphonic work that became something bigger than the sum of its parts.