Heroes On Stage and Off: Christopher Morley reports on Regents Opera’s continuing ‘Ring’ cycle

Premiered by City of Birmingham Touring Opera in a sports hall in 1990 (I was there, along with that great Wagnerian Michael Kennedy and eminent director Peter Hall), Jonathan Dove’s mini-Ring has passed into legend, he and director Graham Vick compressing Wagner’s four-opera cycle into two evenings totalling nine hours and a bit, reducing the orchestra and cutting down the cast. It subsequently served as the springboard launching Longborough Festival Opera’s exploration of Wagner, which this summer will result in LFO’s second complete, full-length Ring cycle to be staged in the Cotswolds’ own Bayreuth. But Regents Opera is trumping Dove’s achievement, currently in the process of staging its own, unabridged cycle, with an orchestra only marginally bigger than Dove’s.