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A scene from Twilight of the Gods at the Coliseum in 2005.
A scene from Twilight of the Gods at the Coliseum in 2005. Phyllida Lloyd’s production was the last time the Ring Cycle had been staged by ENO. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian
A scene from Twilight of the Gods at the Coliseum in 2005. Phyllida Lloyd’s production was the last time the Ring Cycle had been staged by ENO. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian

ENO announces bold plan to stage Ring Cycle from the autumn

This article is more than 3 years old

Richard Wagner’s four-part opera epic will play at London’s Coliseum over several years

It is the Mount Everest of opera, with about 16 hours of music and an epic story of power, love and destruction which collectively represents the ultimate challenge for any company willing to take it on.

Some might say tackling Richard Wagner’s four-part Ring Cycle during a pandemic is folly. English National Opera, announcing the plan on Wednesday, believes the opposite and wants to return to live performance with a bang.

“The timing is good,” said artistic director Annilese Miskimmon. “It’s now or never.”

Among the people who knew about the project there was a real excitement and enthusiasm, she said. “I think that’s indicative of the situation we’re all in at the moment. There is just such a hunger from our artists and from our industry and from our audiences to, not get back to normal, but to have things that inspire us and challenge us.

“In all forms of art, great leaps forward have happened at times when it didn’t seem to be possible. The greatest artists have always made art in difficult circumstances and we are part of that tradition.”

It is the first time in more than 15 years that ENO has staged the Ring. The previous production was directed by Phyllida Lloyd and before that, ENO’s only fully completed cycle was one by the celebrated Wagnerian conductor Reginald Goodall in the early 1970s.

In a co-production with the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the plan is to stage all four parts over five years at ENO’s vast home, the Coliseum, London’s largest theatre. It will begin with the Valkyrie this autumn. Rhinegold will premiere in 2022-23 followed by a reprise of the Valkyrie and new productions of Siegfried and Twilight of the Gods.

It will be directed by the multi-Olivier award winning Richard Jones, behind a famously loved and loathed Ring Cycle featuring Rhinemaidens (water nymphs) in latex nude body suits at Covent Garden in the 1990s.

The Ring premiered in 1876 at the Bayreuth festival theatre in Germany that Wagner had built to stage it. Based on Norse and Germanic myths, it tells the story of a ring that grants power over the world. It has had many interpretations of varying success and remains the most important and challenging large-scale operatic work a company can do.

Robert Lepage staged the Met’s production a decade ago and said it was lifechanging. “The Ring is a revolutionary work of art, aesthetically, historically, politically,” he said in an interview. “You’re not the same person once you’ve done the Ring, and you don’t do the same kind of stage work.”

Jones, who will rehearse the cast in Covid-secure bubbles, said the Ring felt “extraordinarily of the 21st century yet mythological at the same time”.

He added: “How can love and empathy exist in a world of vaulting egos vying for infinite power? I can’t imagine a more pertinent operatic response to the times we find ourselves in.”

Some audiences are put off the Ring Cycle because of the sheer length of the shows. The Royal Opera’s revival of Die Walküre in 2018 was a thrilling – or gruelling – five hours and 50 minutes including two long intervals.

Others are deterred by who sometimes appear to be the most devoted fans. Politicians are particular enthusiasts, with Michael Gove and George Osborne spending a summer break in 2017 enjoying the Ring Cycle in Bayreuth.

Miskimmon encouraged people to put aside their preconceptions, arguing it contains “some of the most beautiful music ever written” and would be a glorious “subconscious theatrical experience”.

She added: “It is one of the most important pieces of art about confronting this struggle between power and our responsibilities as human beings to each other which I think the pandemic has revealed and exposed.

“If you have never seen Wagner or the Ring Cycle before, no matter what age you are, whether you know about classical music or not, I think it will be an unforgettable experience. We will all experience them as really new, modern stories … I think it is going to be revelatory for those who are Wagner fanatics but also those who are Wagner virgins.”

The cycle will be conducted by Martyn Brabbins, ENO’s music director, who promised that “innovation and vibrant theatricality” would be front and centre.

“Our aim is to create as powerful, as immediate and as moving an experience as Wagner imagined,” he said.

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