Why Barenboim is the Ring master of our age

The chance to see a complete Ring cycle is all too rare these days. Martin Kettle reports from Berlin’s Staatsoper, where Daniel Barenboim might be hidden from view, but his Wagner is revelatory

There was a time when it was unusual for a season to pass in a British opera house without the complete Ring being performed. The first Ring cycle to be mounted in postwar Britain was premiered in 1949 at Covent Garden. Thereafter (with the sole exception of 1952), the Ring, or parts of it, was an annual fixture at the Royal Opera House for two decades. Finally there was a fallow year in 1969. By this time, however, Sadler’s Wells Opera (later English National Opera) was building its own cycle, sung in English. The Ring – or parts thereof – continued to be performed most seasons into the 1980s at both houses, with Welsh National Opera and Scottish Opera also mounting Rings and - just as significantly - touring them around Britain.

Little of this period of plenty remains today. This is not to downplay some important recent Ring cycles, such as those put on by Opera North and Longborough festival, or the concert performances at the Proms and elsewhere, let alone the cycle directed by Keith Warner for Covent Garden in 2007 and revived in 2012 and 2018. But the gaps are increasingly large and obvious. Though there are many different causes for this change, the steady decline in Britain’s public subsidy to the opera sector is certainly one of the most decisive in making Wagner’s opera cycle an increasing and sometimes very expensive rarity on our stages. The result is that younger newcomers to the Ring are no longer able to get access to this most important and ambitious of 19th century European musical art works.

The Berlin cast, a mix of newer and fresher voices with some Barenboim veterans, is close to being as good as you will hear these days

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