Crown in the Gruel: Longborough’s ‘Ring’ sweeps towards a promising conclusion, reports Barry Millington

With its new Siegfried presented at the end of May, the unfolding Ring at Longborough Festival Opera has at last got into its stride. Rhiannon Newman Brown’s sets for Das Rheingold in 2019 amounted to little more than a black box with rock-like structures at the left and rear, plus a screen for projected images. Thanks to the exigencies of social distancing, the 2021 Die Walküre was given as a ‘concert production’, most of the action taking place in the rear half of the stage area, behind well-spaced string players. For Siegfried, a more developed staging brings Amy Lane’s intelligent production concept into clearer focus.