Full Cast and Creative Team Announced For Arcola Theatre's Double Bill of SIEGFRIED and GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG

Arcola Theatre and Hackney Empire announced the full cast and creatives for the dramatic conclusion of Wagner's Ring Cycle, in Graham Vick's and Jonathan Dove's innovative reduction. Following on from the critically acclaimed productions of Das Rheingold at the Arcola Theatre in 2019 and Die Walküre last summer at Hackney Empire, the double bill of Siegfried and Götterdämmerung will take place this summer at Hackney Empire with performances on 6 and 7 August 2022.

For Siegfried, Julia Burbach directs Neal Cooper (Siegfried), Freddie Tong (Alberich), Mae Heydorn (Erda), Simon Wilding (Fafner), Paul Carey Jones (Wanderer), Lee Bisset (Brünnhilde), Colin Judson (Mime), Elizabeth Karani (Woodbird), Robin Whitehouse (Fafner's Entourage), Henry Wright (Fafner's Entourage) and Jamie Woollard (Fafner's Entourage).

For Götterdämmerung, Burbach directs Freddie Tong (Alberich), Mae Heydorn (Flosshilde), Mark Le Brocq (Siegfried), Simon Wilding (Hagen), Angharad Lyddon (Waltraute), Lizzie Holmes (Woglinde), Bethan Mary Langford (Wellgunde), Simon Thorpe (Gunther), Lee Bisset (Brünnhilde), Lucy Anderson (Gutrune), Robin Whitehouse (Chorus Man), Henry Wright (Chorus Man) and Jamie Woollard (Chorus Men).

Creatives include Julia Burbach (Director), Peter Selwyn (Conductor), Bettina John (Set and Costume Designer), Robert Price (Lighting Designer), Mark Burns (Associate Director), John Shea (Assistant Conductor/Repetiteur), Kelvin Lim (Assistant Conductor/Repetiteur), Franciska Ery (First Associate Director), Cameron McMillan (Choreographer), Ingrid Shiel (Design Assistant), Felicitas Buder (Costume Supervisor), Josephine Tremelling (Production Manager), Martin John Bristow (Deputy Production Manager) and Christopher Moon-Little (Surtitles).

Standing alone as a closed chapter within the Ring Cycle, Siegfried tells the story of the hero's quest to rescue Brünnhilde from her flame-surrounded sleep on the rock, overcoming dwarves and dragons and guided by a magic woodbird on the way.

Siegfried and Brünnhilde are two lost children of the Gods, the daughter and grandson of Wotan, and in Götterdämmerung they find themselves isolated in a world increasingly torn apart by corruption and fear. Their resilience, courage and love are tested by the arch-villain Hagen, and eventually it becomes clear that only through insight and sacrifice can they bring a conclusion to the flawed world they find themselves in. Brünnhilde initiates the end of an era and her self-immolation re-establishes equilibrium to allow for renewal and a chance for a better future. The circle completes.

Graham Vick (1953 - 2021) was an English opera director known for his experimental and revisionist stagings of traditional and modern operas. He worked in many of the world's leading opera houses and was artistic director of the Birmingham Opera Company. Vick studied at the Royal Northern College of Music. He was Glyndebourne's director of productions 1994-2000. He founded the Birmingham Opera Company in 1987 and continued to work as its artistic director, his many productions including La traviata (co-production with Arena di Verona), Ariadne Sells Out, Ulysses Comes Home, Fidelio, Curlew River (BBC Proms), Idomeneo, Otello (BBC Two), Tippett's The Ice Break, Khovanskygate: A National Enquiry and the premieres of Dove's Life is a Dream and Stockhausen's Mittwoch aus Licht (London 2012 Festival and Cultural Olympiad). Vick's many other productions include Der Ring des Nibelungen (Lisbon and Palermo), Tristan und Isolde (Deutsche Oper Berlin), Boris Godunov, War and Peace and The Makropulos Affair (Mariinsky Theatre), Lulu and Eugene Onegin (Glyndebourne), Macbeth and Otello (La Scala, Milan), Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (Metropolitan Opera, New York), Parsifal and Le Roi Arthus (Paris Opéra), Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny (Rome Opera) and Guillaume Tell (Rossini Opera Festival, Pesaro). Vick was a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, Honorary Professor of Music at the University of Birmingham and International Chair of Opera at the RNCM. He was awarded Honorary Membership of the Royal Philharmonic Society in 2016 and was made a CBE in 2009.

Jonathan Dove is an English composer of opera, choral works, plays, films, and orchestral and chamber music. He has arranged a number of operas for English Touring Opera and the City of Birmingham Touring Opera (now Birmingham Opera Company), including in 1990 an 18-player two-evening adaptation of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen for CBTO. He was Artistic Director of the Spitalfields Festival from 2001 to 2006. In 1998 Dove was joint winner of the Christopher Whelen Award for his work in the fields of theatre music and opera. Productions of Dove's works include: Airport Scenes, an orchestral suite from the airport-comedy opera Flight (University of Warwick Symphony Orchestra); the Australian premiere (the Glyndebourne Festival Opera production) of Flight in March 2006, at the Adelaide Festival under the artistic direction of Brett Sheehy, won Australia's Best Opera award at the national Helpmann Awards; The Enchanted Pig (Young Vic and UK Tour); The Adventures of Pinocchio (Grand Theatre Leeds - commissioned by Sadler's Wells and Opera North); Swanhunter (Opera North); Mansfield Park (Heritage Opera) and Life Is a Dream (Birmingham Opera Company). He was appointed CBE in the 2019 Birthday Honours for services to music.

Julia Burbach is German opera director, based in London with worldwide touring as a director, revival director, movement director and assistant director in opera, theatre and film. Her directing credits include Semele (Shanghai International Arts Festival, 2019), Das Rheingold and Tosca (Grimeborn Festival), Die Walküre (Opéra national de Bordeaux), The Rape of Lucretia (Grimeborn Festival, winner of 2019 OFFIE Award), Il trionfo del tempo e del disinganno (Alte Münze, Kiez Oper Berlin), Madama Butterfly (Grimeborn Festival, Bury Court Opera) and The Fairy Queen (Bury Court Opera, Kiez Oper Berlin). She was nominated for Best Newcomer at the 2019 International Opera Awards. Her credits with The Royal Opera include being Associate Director for Tristan und Isolde, and reviving Ariadne auf Naxos, Il trovatore, La bohème, Così fan tutte and Carmen for The Royal Opera. She also directed the 2018 Spring Gala. In the 2019/20 season she was Revival Director for Otello on tour to Japan and will be Revival Director for La bohème and Tristan und Isolde.

Peter Selwyn is a Professor at the Royal College of Music, a regular coach on the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme at the Royal Opera, where he also works regularly on the music staff, and is the newly appointed Principal Conductor of the Lambeth Orchestra, one of London's oldest and finest amateur orchestras. He has conducted over 60 different works, for companies including Opera North, Welsh National Opera, English Touring Opera, Opera Holland Park and Singapore Lyric Opera, and assisted at ROH, ENO, in Oslo and at the Aldeburgh and Bregenz Festivals. During 8 years in Germany, he worked as Head of Music and Kapellmeister at Staatstheater Nürnberg, spent a season at the Hamburgische Staatsoper, and assisted for three seasons at the Bayreuther Festspiele. He co-founded and for nearly 20 years was co-Artistic Director of the Internationales Kammermusikfestival Nürnberg, where he conducted numerous Britten chamber operas and several operatic world premieres. An experienced and passionate Wagnerian, he has worked on numerous full Ring Cycles, at Bayreuth, ROH, Nuremberg, Strasbourg, Longborough Festival and with the LPO. Before conducting Siegfried and Götterdämmerung for the Grimeborn Festival this summer, he will return to Bayreuth as Music Assistant on the new Ring.

Bettina John is an award-winning international set and costume designer for theatre, opera, dance and music. She hails from Germany, where she received a fashion design degree in 2007 from Kunsthochschule Burg Giebichenstein. Alongside working as a set and costume designer and maker she has had various roles as an educator and mentor for aspiring designers. Consequently, she has been commissioned by Crowood Press to write a new book on costume design for performance which was published in November 2021. Wanting to diversify her practice and dig deeper into questions of performance, she enrolled in an MA in theatre design at London Wimbledon College of Art, from which she graduated in 2018. She was consequently shortlisted for the Linbury Prize 2019. As well as working as a set and costume designer, Bettina John develops and presents work at the intersection of visual and performing arts, often outside the boundaries of the theatre space and involving new forms of technology.

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