Covent Garden Ring Cycle

Covent Garden have announced details of their Ring Cycles for 2007, the first time the new Keith Warner production will have been done complete. They are doing 3 cycles (starting on 2nd October, 17th October, 26th October). Lisa Gasteen and John Treleaven return as Brunnhilde and Siegfried with Philip Langridge as Loge and Rosalind Plowright as Fricka. Bryn Terfel does Wotan in Cycles 1 and 3 with John Tomlinson as Wotan in Cycle 2. Placido Domingo is doing Siegmund in Cycles 2 and 3 with Simon O'Neil in the role in Cycle 1; Eve-Maria Westbroek is Sieglinde; Peter Sidhom, Alberich.

We have until November to decide whether to go or not. Having seen the production in parts I am in 2 minds about seeing it, but doing a complete Ring cycle in a week is a very special sort of event which can transcend the problems of the individual production. Even so, my disappointment with the last Act of Gotterdammerung has rather coloured my view of the work.