The Golden Ring (1965)
Watching the Vienna Philharmonic, Georg Solti, and a stellar cast record Wagner's immense Götterdämmerung for Decca in the fall of 1964 provides a thousand lessons in the art of working under pressure. For this classic documentary, The Golden Ring, a BBC camera crew eavesdropped as producer John Culshaw guided his engineering team through tricky technical maneuvers far removed from the relative ease of modern digital editing. What utter concentration and focus Birgit Nilsson, Wolfgang Windgassen, Gottlob Frick, and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau bring to their collective and individual singing! Solti, for his part, oozes energy and exactitude as he pleads for greater precision and frets over details in the car en route to the sessions.
Director: Humphrey Burton
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Birgit Nilsson as Herself - Singer (Brunhilde) |
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Wolfgang Windgassen as Himself - Singer (Siegfried) |
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Gottlob Frick as Himself - Singer (Hagen) |
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Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau as Himself - Singer (Gunther) |
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Claire Watson as Herself - Singer (Gertrune) |
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Georg Solti as Himself - The Conductor |
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John Culshaw as Himself - The Recording Team |
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Gordon Parry as Himself - The Recording Team |
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James Brown as Himself - The Recording Team |
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Christopher Raeburn as Himself - The Recording Team |
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Jack Law as Himself - The Recording Team |
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Erik Smith as Himself - The Recording Team |
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Humphrey Burton as Himself - Narrator |
| Sound | Norman Allen | Sound Recordist |
| Production | John Drummond | Associate Producer |
| Camera | Peter Sargent | Director of Photography |
| Production | Walter Klapper | Associate Producer |
| Production | Humphrey Burton | Producer |
| Editing | Inman Hunter | Editor |
| Directing | Humphrey Burton | Director |
