Ringing the Changes: Matthew Rye compares the latest DVD ‘Ring’ from Berlin’s Deutsche Oper with a remastering of the classic centenary cycle from Bayreuth

The roughly contemporaneous release of the latest filmed Ring cycle and a reboot of the first from almost exactly forty years earlier seems an obvious subject for joint consideration. In many respects, Europe is in the midst of a golden era of new Rings, to the extent that Bayreuth, two of Berlin’s three houses, the Royal Opera in London, and houses in Helsinki, Gothenburg, Stuttgart, Munich and Zurich, to name only the most significant, have recently launched, or are about to launch, new cycles from many of the leading lights of contemporary theatre.