CD Review: The Dallas Symphony’s glorious ‘Ring of the Nibelung’

I keep going back to sample excerpts of the Dallas Symphony’s new 13-CD set of Wagner’s complete Ring of the Nibelung. Is the orchestra really playing as gloriously as I think?

The answer is emphatically yes. In recorded sonics at once vivid and sumptuous, music director Fabio Luisi and the DSO work nonstop magic, from elegantly tapered  whispers of sound to thrilling explosions.  The orchestra, beautifully controlled, polished and endlessly flexible, sounds as if it can do anything without breaking a sweat.

The brasses are amazing: such tonal polish, such control, such subtlety when called for. The horns are particularly splendid at every point in the dynamic range, and principal Daniel Hawkins dispenses Siegfried’s horn calls with glowing tone and apparently effortless aplomb. The performances are all the more impressive for being seamlessly patched together from live Meyerson Symphony Center concerts last year, with no subsequent “cleanup” sessions. 

Luisi’s experience with the Ring includes conducting and recording it with the Metropolitan Opera. Again and again, one marvels at his organic feeling for the music’s ebb, flow and surge. With fastidious attention to balances, elegant detailing never feels fussy. Seamless crescendos and decrescendos go on and on.

The DSO began its semi-staged Ring in May 2025 with the first two operas, Das Rheingold and Die Walküre. In October it presented Siegfried and Götterdämmerung, then — apparently for the first time for an American orchestra, as opposed to an opera company — all four operas in a weeklong cycle.

The CDs are issued in a boxed set on the Delos label, with a 287-page booklet including program notes and synopses by DSO annotator René Spencer Saller and complete German libretto with English translations.  The recordings are dedicated to the memory of the late businessman and DSO patron Morton H. Meyerson, who first proposed the idea of a Luisi/DSO Ring.

Ah, but opera’s about singing, you say. For all Wagner’s orchestral magic — setting scenes, evoking characters, things and even hidden thoughts —  there is that. Vocally, the DSO’s Ring is a mixed bag.

These operas have a lot of roles to fill, many demanding big voices never in generous supply. The most famous opera companies sometimes have to settle for second- and third-choice singers.

Some of the best vocalism in the DSO Ring comes in secondary roles. Star of the show is Štefan Margita’s Loge, portraying the demigod of fire with a tenor alternately acidic and sweetly seductive, and everything in between. He really sings off the words, and obviously means every one. Stephen Milling’s sonorous bass captures the menace of Sieglinde’s brutish husband Hunding and the conniving Gibichung Hagen.

Deniz Uzun gives top goddess Fricka and the warning Valkyrie Waltraute a firm, full mezzo and apt emotional nuance. Even auxiliary gods Froh and Donner are well served by, respectively, tenor Jamez McCorkle and baritone Hunter Enoch.

Tómas Tómasson supplies appropriate bluster for the Niebelung Alberich’s attempted seduction of the Rhinemaidens and his plots to grab gold and power. As Alberich’s abused brother Mime, character tenor Michael Laurenz is entitled to spit out pain and resentment in something less like song than Sprechstimme, pitched speech.

Valentina Farcas, Kimberly Gratland James and Renée Tatum are a mellifluous trio of Rhinemaidens, Farcas doubling as a sweetly singing Forest Bird. In addition to Uzun and Tatum, the Valkyrie contingent is stirringly voiced by Alexandra Loutsion, Miriam Clark, Jennifer Johnson Cano, Kathryn Henry, Sun-Ly Pierce and Melody Wilson. Tamara Mumford joins Cano and Henry for the three Norns, spinners of fate past, present and future.

But what of the principal roles, the movers and shakers of the mythic — but also quite human — drama?

Mark Delavan is audibly a “mature” Wotan, a letdown for those who remember James Morris’ heyday as the top god, his great trombone of a voice soaring over the orchestra. But Wotan is weakened by financial and amorous exploitations, with bills coming due, so one can make an argument for a bass-baritone more seasoned than stentorian. That said, Delavan’s vibrato seems to widen as the cycle proceeds, more than flirting with a wobble.

Lise Lindstrom has the decibels for Brünnhilde, at least on top, but at the cost of a steely edge and her own spreading vibrato. Too much of her lower-range singing gets lost. Daniel Johansson is a leaner voiced, more lyric tenor than one usually hears for Siegfried. Although he has adequate power and projection, he impresses me less here than he did at the Meyerson. I hear nothing special or particularly compelling.

Sara Jakubiak is an honorable Sieglinde. Christopher Ventris has had a notable career as a Wagnerian, and his initial appearance as Siegmund is promising. But it’s soon apparent that the voice is past its prime, with a widening wobble. Mumford, fine as she is as a Norn, has too little gravitas for earth-mother Erda.

The rest of the singers are capable, if not particularly distinctive: Laura Wilde (Freia), Liang Li (Fasolt), Andrew Harris (Fafner), Roman Trekel (Gunther) and Kathryn Henry (Gutrune, though better as a Valkyrie and Norn). The Dallas Symphony Chorus, prepared by director Anthony Blake Clark, sonorously represents the Gibichung vassals in Götterdämmerung.

Whatever the vocal reservations, it’s hard to imagine a Ring Cycle more gloriously — more elegantly — played than by the DSO, or an orchestral performance of the work more sumptuously recorded. It’s surely one of the greatest accomplishments in the orchestra’s 125-year history.

Wagner: Der Ring des Nibelungen. Soloists, Dallas Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, Fabio Luisi, conductor. Delos DE3624, 13-CD boxed set. $112.99. Available from retailers and the Meyerson Symphony Shop. Also available for streaming on Apple Music Classical via this link: https://classical.music.apple.com/us/album/1885975796.