Henrietta Bredin has put together a series of events to celebrate the Royal Opera House’s Ring cycle
It is with considerable trepidation that I venture to write about Richard Wagner in these pages, considering that in doing so I am following a trail well blazed by Bernard Levin — a passionate and lushly articulate devotee — and that no fewer than three highly eminent Wagner scholars are current contributors: Michael Tanner, Patrick Carnegy and Robin Holloway. However, I shall take my courage in both hands as I am in the final throes of a project I was asked to take on by the Royal Opera House just over a year ago, devising a festival of events to celebrate its performances of the Ring cycle this October.
It has been something of a dream brief. Off I’d go like a questing hound, snuffling out ideas and dragging them back to the ROH to drop them in a quivering heap for consideration. And asking people if they’d like to collaborate on the venture turned out to be an absolute joy. Would the British Film Institute consider a fortnight of Wagnerian film? Yes, they certainly would. And what about a series of talks on different Wagner-associated subjects at the British Library? Absolutely. Which British actor would most perfectly capture the essence of Wagner’s breathtaking scope of vision and his vaulting, unstoppable ambition? Hmmm. How about Simon Callow? Would he record a selection of extracts from Wagner’s letters? You bet he would.
There has been expert help available on every side. Barry Millington and Stewart Spencer between them know more about Wagner than I’ll ever know about anything and have supplied an inexhaustible stream of suggestions. They have come up with a wonderful concert programme that will include, among other things, what we hoped very much would be a world première, of an early sketch Wagner wrote for a comic opera, but which unfortunately we can’t quite justify claiming as such since we think it has in fact been performed once before, in Bayreuth.
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