As various commentators have pointed out, Regents Opera should now be regarded as an opera company full stop, not a ‘fringe’ one, albeit a small company requiring some radical changes to be made in order to stage the Ring live before an audience. But The Ring is The Ring is The Ring and it is a remarkable achievement. York Hall in Bethnal Green, a legendary venue for British boxing, was chosen last year as the performance space, and The Ring is being performed there, in the round, twice, in an intimate and close-up experience for audiences, with many seats no further than 5 rows from the action on stage. The Regents’ Ring is uncut and with a full cast but with a very reduced orchestra. The adaptation of Wagner’s enormous 90+ orchestra for The Ring down to a group of 23 musicians must have been a huge task, requiring, I am sure, hundreds of hours of detailed work by Ben Woodward, the conductor, in arranging it, and incredible stamina from the 23 musicians in performing it.
This is therefore the kind of event it is very difficult to be impartial about in a review. As part of the Manchester Wagner Society, I interviewed both Ben Woodward (conductor) and Catherine Woodward (Brunnhilde) in Autumn 2024 on their forthcoming Ring. The whole cycle has been presented without any Arts Council money and has cost approx. £600,000 to put on. In a time of economic stagnation, and unwillingness to fund opera from public sources, the sort of energy the Woodwards and everyone else involved in this production has shown is astonishing and a remarkable exemplar to those struggling for the survival of this art form and these great works. Some may think this is the thin end of the wedge – an adaptation for a small orchestra will encourage the surviving publicly-funded opera companies to assume that private sector initiative can fill the gap they can no longer fund (there is a Grange Park Ring Cycle planned to kick off in 2026 under Antony Negus) ……..but then it is up to us as voters and members of political parties to make the case for public sector funding of great art, as in the original Keynesian vision, and to support the bridging of gaps in public appreciation of works such as The Ring through making them available and (relatively) affordable
The York Hall is a remarkable building – a leisure centre nowadays but, as above, a boxing venue also, with Tower Hamlets proudly emblazoned over the entrance and a series of rather murky decidedly functional areas leading to a large bar area and then to the auditorium – see below for photos of inside and outside
This is only the 7th Ring cycle I have seen – in the sense of experiencing all 4 music dramas in a short period of time – Bayreuth 1972, ENO 1973 and 1977, ROHCG 2012, Opera North 2016, and Bayreuth 2022. There is something about hearing these pieces in close proximity to one another that makes for a very special experience
John's musical journey 