Inside L.A. Opera’s $32-million Wagnerian wager

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If there’s one thing the public knows about Los Angeles Opera’s $32-million production of Richard Wagner’s ‘The Ring of the Nibelung,’ it’s the price tag.

While the big sum does serve as a convenient shorthand signaling that this is a major undertaking, it also has tended to reduce to dollar signs something that’s meant to be a peak experience of music wedded to myth, philosophy and drama. As Placido Domingo, the company’s general director, puts it, ‘It is my hope that [audiences] will be looking at the art, not at the money that they think has been spent.’

With L.A.’s first-ever Ring moving toward a home stretch that begins with the April 3 opening of the final stand-alone installment, ‘Gotterdammerung’ -- then continues May 29-June 26 with the climactic mounting of the entire 17-hour-plus opus -- we try to follow the money and find out just what $32 million buys. One hint: In director Achim Freyer’s unorthodox staging, we found nary a line item for Viking-style horned helmets.

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-- Mike Boehm