Tchneriakov's "Götterdämmerung": His Fourth and Final Desecration of Wagner's "Ring"
by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2026 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved Last night (Monday, May 4) my husband Charles and I watched Wagner’s Götterdämmerung , fourth installment in the tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen (“The Ring of the Nibelung”), in a frustrating staging by the Berlin Oper Under den Linden (the last part of the name refers to its location, and during the split of Germany between 1947 and 1990 it was in East Berlin) conducted by Christian Thielemann (after the original conductor, Daniel Barenboim, withdrew for health reasons – he is in his 80’s, after all!) and directed by Dmitri Tcherniakov. Dmitri Tcherniakov is a youngish (born 1970, which would make him 55) Russian stage director with a terrible reputation for making hash out of great operas. Among his problems as an opera director are an aversion to supernatural plot elements (which makes me wonder whose idea it was to have him direct Wagner’s Ring , which is full of supernatural plot element...