Barry Millington, The ‘Ring’ in Toronto

It is perhaps only fitting that the Canadian Opera Company should inaugurate its splendid new auditorium in the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts with a staging of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen. The latter is, after all, on one level at least, about the problems of building, paying for and maintaining a new house. General director Richard Bradshaw, like Wotan, became ensnared in contracts of his own devising (as I will elucidate later), though one can but salute the resolution and single-mindedness he has demonstrated to mount such an undertaking in the new building.