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Do you love Wagner enough to get naked?

Written By The Wagnerian on Wednesday 9 May 2012 | 8:22:00 pm

Those little devils over at the Bavarian State Opera's marketing department are at it again it would seem. Should you wish, you also can take part as we believe registration is still open,  although might we suggest taking a flask of your favorite tipple - just to stay warm mind.

The Bavarian State Opera will open the 2012 Munich Opera Festival on the weekend of 23-24 June with, among other things, an installation by the renowned artist Spencer Tunick. Tunick's new work will be entitled The Ring and in it thousands of art lovers will pose nude at several venues in downtown Munich. Tunick's artistic installation is inspired by Richard Wagner's great opus The Ring of the Nibelung and its new production by the producer Andreas Kriegenburg which reaches its culmination on 30 June with the premiere of Götterdämmerung. Those interested and willing to pose naked for Tunick in public are invited to register with the Bavarian State Opera's website!

The artist is known for his temporary installations of hundreds and sometimes even thousands of naked human bodies against impressive backdrops in public. For the 2012 Munich Opera Festival, Tunick is designing his first large scale action in Germany. Several places in downtown Munich will provide the background for his latest art installation: "Andreas Kriegenburg primarily tells his version of The Ring of the Nibelung by means of the performers' stage and gesticulation movements in addition to their singing. This produces an interesting equivalence to Spencer Tunick's human body installations. That is why it was an obvious choice to show these two projects for the Opera Festival", says Nikolaus Bachler, Manager of the Bavarian State Opera.

Tunick's works were done for SITE Santa Fe in New Mexico (2001), the XVI Bienal de Sāo Paulo in Brazil (2002), the Biennale de Lyon (2005) and the Viennese Kunsthalle (2008). Volunteer participants meet at an appointed time and take their clothes off. With the support of his team, Tunick organises and directs the participants according to his ideas and wishes and forms them into a group and captures the moment in photos and video. "I am very happy to have been invited by the Bavarian State Opera to Munich. Wagner's claim to being a total art creator has long fascinated me. With the images of Andreas Kriegenburg's stage production in mind, for this very special installation I intend to adapt motifs from The Ring like dragons, flames and even the ring itself", as Spencer Tunick explained.

All participants can register by 22 June 2012, 11:30 p.m. at the latest on the Bavarian State Opera's website, www.staatsoper.de/Tunick. The participants will be informed a week in advance of the installation by email about details such as the meeting point and the time. All of those contributing will receive a limited edition photo. Participation is open to anyone 18 years or older. On the day of the installation, only participants will be admitted to the venues.

Spencer Tunick was born in Middletown (New York) and lives in the Hudson Valley in New York. Since 1992 he has been engaged in outdoor installations whose main motif has been the human body in the nude. For this purpose, he normally gets thousands of people together. Tunick has done his work throughout the world, including in Belgium, Canada, the United States and Brazil. His temporary installations, which are always captured in photos and video, deal primarily with society's preconceived and often negative connotations of nudity: "I am fascinated by the beauty that is inherent in every human being", says Tunick.

Register now!