Up Close and Personal: Longborough Festival Opera continues to impress, finds Roland Matthews

Review of Der Ring des Nibelungen, directed Lane, conducted Negus, Longborough, 2024.

November 2024, Volume 18, Number 3, 71–5.

There is a moment towards the end of Götterdämmerung in Longborough’s new Ring cycle which encapsulates both the strengths and the weaknesses of Amy Lane’s production. As the conflagration takes hold and Brünnhilde joins her husband on the funeral pyre Lane brings key protagonists back on stage, starting with Wotan, then Siegfried, the Norns and Waltraute. All stand gazing into the auditorium as it is enveloped in flames projected on the surrounding walls. The viewer is left with a powerful sense of a shared journey, of having been part of this close-knit family of performers who have told once more this epic tale of greed, loss, corruption, deceit, love and redemption. Such intense audience involvement is key to the Longborough effect, and helps explain why this little opera festival has made such a startling impact on the country’s music scene.