Opera review: Longborough's tiny stage takes on the Ring - and wins

There are no two ways about it: Wagner’s Ring cycle, the biggest challenge that any opera company can face, has been mounted with triumphant success in Longborough, and now presumably has been laid to rest. Nine years ago, at the Cambridge Arts Theatre, I saw the first attempt to stage it, in Jonathan Dove’s drastically cut version, and with skeletonic orchestration, and though there was some decent singing, on the whole I was unimpressed. I couldn’t believe that during the course of the following decade Martin and Lizzie Graham would succeed in turning a large chicken shed in Gloucestershire into a comfortable theatre, seating more than 400 spectators, and with a semi-sunken orchestra pit accommodating almost 70 players; even more incredible that they, working closely with Anthony Negus, should recruit singers who have been for the most part not only adequate but also thrilling, as their frequent poaching by other companies has demonstrated.

What remains mysterious is why Negus is not to be found conducting Wagner in the world’s leading opera houses, since he is as fine as any contemporary Wagnerian, and considerably superior to most. It is thanks to him that not only did the singers perform with all the virtues we associate with Reginald Goodall’s Wagner — clear enunciation; the nearest approach possible to bel canto, which Wagner always said he wanted, though he didn’t always write vocal lines that enabled it; and an avoidance of going into overdrive, even at the largest climaxes — but that the orchestra also played with such moving, sometimes heartbreaking eloquence, and that the musico-dramatic structures were so unerringly revealed.