III. THE TETRALOGY THAT NEVER WAS: LA SCALA 1972

The first documented contact with Luchino Visconti concerning a production of the Ring is dated 15 January 1972. The idea was to produce an opera each year starting in March 1973 and to complete the cycle in 1976, which would then be reprised in the 1976-1977 opera season. On the same occasion, La Scala’s artistic director, Massimo Bogianckino, informed the filmmaker that the orchestra would be conducted by Wolfgang Sawallisch, the resident conductor of the Munich Staatsoper, where incidentally the entire cycle was later presented again. Visconti’s initial idea was to create the tetralogy, taking into account “Wagner’s times, albeit revised in light of a modern and more sombre vision”. At the same time, the director was also engaged in a project that had been around since 1968 for Tristan und Isolde at the Vienna Staatsoper, under the baton of Leonard Bernstein. It too was planned for 1973, but it never came to fruition.

Ludwig took up much of the director’s time and energy, indeed he even contemplated a scene, which was never filmed, with the premiere of Tristan in Munich in 1865. As a result, a contract was only drawn up in July. As late as June, Visconti was still considering engaging an unnamed “German painter” for the scenery, but the contract stipulated that sketches and croquis for Das Rheingold were to be supplied by the director himself “by 30 September”.

Despite being taken so seriously ill on 27 July, Visconti did not abandon the project, and during his convalescence, he continued to study Wagner. On 18 September, however, no sketches had reached La Scala and in October, his health forced the director to change plans and to entrust the set design to Mario Chiari, a long-time collaborator and set designer for Ludwig, with the aid of Mario Scisci. In late November, Visconti himself showed the designs for the four component parts of Das Rheingold on Italian television.

By 17 January 1973, the sketches had been supplied and the croquis for the costumes were already in preparation at the Tirelli workshop. Bogianckino expressed some perplexity, albeit with the utmost respect. He stated that he could find none of the initial historical principles talked of by Visconti, to the extent that Chiari’s “model”, marked by “symmetries”, appeared to him to be a “container appropriate for the music”, but still too close to Wieland Wagner’s tradition that “had cancelled any mythological and geographic reference, any figurative and narrative allusion”. A telegram, sent by Visconti from Rome on 30 January, put an end to the project: his doctors had warned him against travelling to Milan for Das Rheingold and against undertaking “such an onerous commitment”. On 3 February, he wrote in the “Corriere della Sera” that “It is with great sorrow that I am abandoning La Scala”, and that he hoped to be able to begin work on the Ring the following year.