Conductor Donald Runnicles is lord of the ‘Ring’ at SF Opera’s ‘Rheingold’
To experience “The Ring of the Nibelung,” Wagner’s compendious operatic treatment of Nordic myth, is to be deluged with information on many fronts. For four extended nights in the theater, a complex drama plays out in parallel onstage, in Wagner’s sonorous libretto, in his vocal writing and in the orchestra.
It was that last element that came to the fore on Tuesday, June 12, when the San Francisco Opera’s revival of the cycle got under way with a sleek and tempestuous account of “Das Rheingold” in the War Memorial Opera House.
Which is another way of saying that Donald Runnicles is back.