The Ring of the Nibelung: Siegfried

Frank Castorf's Siegfried turns Wagner's opera into a series of striking, modern scenes that trade mythic forest settings for urban and political backdrops. The film centers on the young Siegfried and his foster father Mime, showing their tense exchanges against a giant Mount Rushmore-style monument made up of Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Mao. Later, what would traditionally be a wooded realm is staged in Berlin's Alexanderplatz, and the legendary Nothung sword is reimagined as a machine gun. The movie stays close to the opera's sequence of events without giving away surprises in later acts, using provocative imagery to ask how myth and ideology intersect in a contemporary frame.

Released in 2016, the film is directed by Frank Castorf and adapts Richard Wagner's music drama, with Stefan Vinke as Siegfried, Andreas Conrad as Mime, John Lundgren as Wanderer, Albert Dohmen as Alberich and Karl-Heinz Lehner as Fafner.

As a filmed opera rather than a mainstream blockbuster, it saw a limited theatrical and festival circulation, and no major box office totals were widely reported. Its audience has mainly been opera patrons and critics interested in stage innovation rather than general moviegoers.

Certain images from the production stuck in public conversation, especially the oversized political heads and the weaponized Nothung. Those choices fed debates about appropriation of historical figures, the modernization of classical repertoire, and how political symbols can be grafted onto mythic stories, making this staging one of the more talked-about Castorf projects in contemporary opera circles.

Critical response leaned split over Castorf's staging decisions, while singers and musicians earned widespread praise for their vocal and musical commitment. Viewers who favor experimental reinterpretations found much to discuss, and those preferring traditional presentations reacted more warily, so audience reaction often depended on how open someone was to radical reimagining of Wagner's work.