After the performance of “Götterdämmerung” (“Twilight of the Gods”), some audience members greeted the creative team with whistles and shouts of dissatisfaction, and some of the images shown on stage were confusing.
After the performance, when curator Marcus Lobbes and his team came on stage, whistles and shouts of dissatisfaction were heard, reported the German news agency dpa. However, the singers and musicians received warm applause, especially conductor Christian Thielemann.
The festival organizers announced before the performance that this was the first time in the event’s history that artificial intelligence was used on stage – “not as a character, but as a force generating images.”
According to the organizers, the singers were to become “a constant point in a visually boiling cosmos of light, textures, history, and associations,” where images constantly change, merge into each other, and unexpectedly appear on stage.
Artificial intelligence on stage mixed history and the present
The AI-generated projections used images from previous productions of Wagner’s “Ring” cycle and various historical themes.
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The images were pre-selected by M. Lobbes, director of the Dortmund Theatre and Digitalization Academy, and his team. The technology created a constantly changing collage on stage from these images.
However, for some viewers, it raised more questions than admiration.
Among the images shown on stage were former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, the World Trade Center towers after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and a special postage stamp issued in 1990 to mark German reunification.
The festival organizers emphasized that each performance will be different because “images and associations never stand still.”
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Two more performances of this production are scheduled in the Bayreuth festival program.
