Wagner’s Ring Cycle Gets Bold Samoan Rework

Here is an insane undertaking: a small London-based arts collective, Gafa, run by singers of Samoan heritage, putting on a complete Ring cycle – four vast operas, almost 15 hours of music – in a church in Putney, southwest London, Stephen Moss writes for The Guardian. Surely an act of hubris that will invite nemesis, even from gods facing imminent twilight.

Except that New Zealand-born Sani Muliaumaseali’i, the co-founder of the collective and driving force behind the project, refuses to see it in those terms, Moss discovers.

This is not an adaptation but a presentation of the entire work – with Samoan-inspired interpolations.

Doing the whole Ring with a full orchestra does not come cheap. Muliaumaseali’i is coy about the cost, but it is well into six figures, with funding principally from long-term backers Clearpoint, a consultancy firm based in London and New Zealand which describes itself as “passionate about promoting the unheard voices of the Pacific region”.

Gafa is a professional and amateur cross-cultural and disciplinary group of writers and musicians, performers, designers and filmmakers.

Original article by Stephen Moss, The Guardian, October 28, 2021.

Photo by Alicia Canter.


Tags: Gafa  Guardian (The)  Sani Muliaumaseali’i  The Ring Cycle  Wagner  

Pirate Comedy Deserves Another Season

Pirate Comedy Deserves Another Season

Cancelled after two season, Taika Waititi’s “silly comedy” Our Flag Means Death “deserves one more voyage”, according to Radio Times critic George White. “ was meant to be sacred…