Regents Opera's Ring is a formidable achievement

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I saw the world end in a Bethnal Green leisure centre. Regents Opera’s Ring cycle, which began in 2022 in Freemasons’ Hall in Covent Garden, has found its culmination and completion at York Hall, a rundown public bath better known for championship boxing. Tower Hamlets security staff scan you for concealed weapons on the way in, which is not exactly typical at the opera. Still, the Ring is not a typical opera – and isn’t art supposed to feel dangerous?

But once you’re inside – and as long as you’re not seated within earshot of the bar staff, who clatter and chatter throughout – Caroline Staunton’s scaled down production transfers seamlessly; in fact, the sightlines are better. The same 24-piece orchestra, the same catwalk stage surrounded on three sides by the audience, the same white minimalist settings by designer Isabella van Braeckel. And the same rather facile relocation of the action to the contemporary art world, a universe that’s surely far more alien to most viewers than the swords and spears of Wagner’s myth.

Ultimately, I’m not sure that the concept matters very much, and anyway, it recedes as the cycle progresses. What we really want to know about any new Ring is whether Wagner’s enchantment endures; whether he still pulls you in with that first E flat of Das Rheingold and throws you out, shaken, after Gotterdämmerung into a world that no longer feels quite the same, at least until your dreams return to normal. The answer here has to be yes. On its own terms, the Regents Opera Ring cycle is a formidable achievement.