Keeping it in the Family: Barry Millington is gripped by the dynastic saga of the new Bayreuth ‘Ring’

Given that Wagner’s Ring centres on a dynastic struggle and its consequences for civilisation at large, it’s perhaps surprising that more directors have not thought of setting their productions against the backdrop of such a conflict in the modern world. When the original idea of a Ring mounted by four different directors fell through, and then the German director Tatjana Gürbaca also declined to take up the challenge, the Bayreuth Festival invited the relatively little known Austrian Valentin Schwarz to devise and execute his own concept.