On the evidence of their Siegfried, Regents Opera’s Ring will be well worth catching

It’s sometimes said that if Wagner were alive today he’d be making movies, but come on – really? A generation of Wagnerites has grown up for whom the first and definitive encounter with Der Ring des Nibelungen was on the small screen – in my case, the BBC’s early-eighties serialisation of the Bayreuth centenary production. What lingered was not the spectacle, but the intimacy: Donald McIntyre and Gwyneth Jones enveloped in darkness, reaching into each other’s souls. If you grew up with Wagner on TV and came of age, culturally speaking, around the time The Sopranos first aired, it seems obvious that the Ring isn’t some effects-laden Marvel blockbuster before its time, but the world’s first long-form TV drama.

For evidence, look at the proliferation of small-scale Rings since 1990, when Jonathan Dove first produced his pioneering (if heavily cut) Birmingham version for just 18 players. Ben Woodward, the conductor of Regents Opera’s ongoing Ring at the Freemasons’ Hall has opted for an orchestra of 24, using the Hall’s organ to beef up the climaxes and thicken the darker textures.