Wagner Re-imagined in the Cotswolds: Roger Allen reviews the Longborough ‘Ring’

Review of Der Ring des Nibelungen, directed Privett, conducted Negus, Longborough, 2013.

November 2013, Volume 7, Number 3, 77–81.

It seemed an unlikely prospect: three fully staged cycles of Der Ring des Nibelungen in a small theatre in a remote location in the northern Cotswolds. Yet this is exactly what the Longborough Festival Opera achieved. Martin and Lizzie Graham began their project in 1996 with performances of Jonathan Dove’s Ring Saga, a chamber version that compresses the entire cycle into two evenings accompanied by an ensemble of eighteen instruments. This progressed through fully staged productions of the individual operas towards the presentation of the complete cycle in the summer of 2013. The 500-seat theatre is an ingenious adaptation of a barn-like structure with the orchestra concealed under the stage in true Bayreuth fashion. But how well would Wagner’s epic vision work in so small a space?