I seem to have been steeped in opera lately. First there was Ariadne auf Naxos at Glyndebourne, then Peter Grimes on the beach at Aldeburgh, and now Wagner’s complete Ring cycle at Longborough in Gloucestershire, all within the space of three weeks. As I write, I haven’t quite seen the whole Ring cycle — there is still one more opera, Götterdämmerung, to come — but it is already plain that something astonishing has happened. Martin Graham, who has lived for most of his life in a Cotswold manor house with a tremendous view next to the little village of Longborough near Stow-on-the-Wold, decided 30 years ago with his wife Lizzie that they would like to create a theatre there and one day stage Wagner’s Ring in it.
It was an ambition of truly Wagnerian proportions, and one that seemed as doomed to disaster as the gods of Valhalla.
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