A.I. Went to the Opera, Creating Images for an Anniversary Production of Wagner’s ‘Ring Cycle’ at the Theater Where He First Staged the Masterpiece

It took Richard Wagner a quarter-century to complete the four-part opera. The new production, called “10010110,” uses generative artificial intelligence to explore the artwork’s evolution

Ryley Graham | Correspondent

August 5, 2026 5:03 p.m.

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An experimental performance of Richard Wagner’s famous opera tetralogy that draws on artificial intelligence has reportedly been met with mixed reactions since its premiere this summer at Germany’s Bayreuth Festival.

Called 10010110, a reference to the number 150 as written in binary, the interpretation was designed to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the premiere of Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung) at the very same festival grounds in 1876. Curated by Marcus Lobbes, director of Germany’s Academy for Theater and Digitality, 10010110 was intended to showcase not only the score and drama of the original opera, but also the work’s journey through time and history.

“This project views the Ring as an open resonance chamber—a work to be retold again and again, not despite its history but because of it,” according to a statement from Bayreuth Festival’s magazine.

In the years since the Ring’s premiere, directors have been known to reinvent the production’s themes—greed, love, and the collapse of order—to reflect the issues of the day. To create a new performance to honor the Ring’s evolving history, Lobbes and his team trained computers with archival images from previous stagings of the show then projected A.I. visuals onto screens that covered the breadth of the stage. Singers stood largely static for the duration of the nearly 15-hour opera, which is performed over four days.

“In this context, [the A.I] is sort of a big dream machine,” Lobbes told Antoine Leboyer in 2025 on the podcast “Entrepreneurial Realities.” “It’s a sort of remembering what has happened before and what it could mean now.”

As for what specifically appeared on those screens—that was up to the A.I. itself. The show is designed so that the system spins images in real time. This includes some footage from previous performances, but also historical imagery and natural scenery, some archival and some generated.

It was the randomness of this spontaneous flow that, above all, some critics took issue with.

“Faces appeared, only to go instantly out of focus. Some were very famous (Adolf Hitler, Queen Elizabeth II, JFK) but I struggled to identify most,” writes music historian Flora Willson for the Guardian. “Watercolor rocks became bodies became other bodies. There were rapid swings between the entirely inscrutable and the totally obvious.”

At the conclusion of the show, the Associated Press’ Ronald Blum reports, the conductor and cast were met with a standing ovation, while the digital production team faced whistles and boos.

As Lobbes himself points out, this was an audience made up mostly of Wagner enthusiasts. “They are very well informed,” Lobbes told Leboyer in 2025.

Buffs of Wagner history are likely familiar with his concept of Gesamtkunstwerk, the idea of a grand work of art that mixes many forms, including dance, text and music. Wagner was a complicated figure, intensely dedicated to his art, and the Ring is perhaps the best example of the lengths he went to realize his vision.

Beginning in 1848, Wagner spent over a quarter of a century composing and writing what would become 15 hours of music spread over four distinct but connected operas, something audiences had never experienced before. The plot of the Ring, inspired by Norse and Germanic mythology, tells of a golden ring that grants power to its wearer, and the ensuing battle between gods, humans, dwarves and giants.

When the Ring finally premiered in Wagner’s intended four-part form in 1876, it was met with an awe that persists to this day. But despite Wagner’s meticulous planning and anxieties over the work, the Ring has proved to be remarkably adaptable. The music has remained largely untouched, but directors often reimagine the visuals.

So it follows that Lobbes’ A.I.-infused production is not the first time an interpretation of the Ring has been poorly received by initial viewers.

In 1976, French director Patrice Chéreau brought the “Centennial Ring” to Bayreuth Festival, an iteration that set the story not in the mythical land of legend but rather the Industrial Revolution years that would have defined Wagner’s early life. Chéreau’s choice to use the source material to explore modern themes of capitalism and industrialism sparked discontent to the point of near-riots. But by its final performance years later, Chéreau’s Ring received a record-breaking ovation.

Ryley Graham is a freelance journalist based in New York City. Her work has appeared in outlets such as National Geographic, Earth Island Journal and USA Today.