English National Opera (ENO) and the Metropolitan Opera are collaborating on a new Ring Cycle.
The series will launch in autumn 2021 at the London Coliseum and finish in 2025. It’s the first time in 15 years that ENO has staged a full Ring Cycle.
ENO’s Ring Cycle will actually begin not with Das Rheingold but with Die Walküre, with Richard Jones directing and Martyn Brabbins on the podium. Das Rheingold will then premiere in 2022 followed by a reprise of The Valkyrie in 2023. The final two parts – Siegfried and Götterdämmerung – will follow in 2024 and 2025.
“Richard Jones’s theatrical vision is designed to be emotionally and narratively gripping both for long-time Wagner-lovers and for those seeing this amazing opera for the first time,” commented ENO artistic director Annilese Miskimmon. “This epic story of a rebellious warrior maiden who defies the gods in defense of humanity combines myth with modernity alongside some of the most powerful and recognisable operatic music ever written.”
Added Jones: “The Ring feels extraordinarily of the twenty-first century yet mythological at the same time. How can love and empathy exist in a world of vaulting egos vying for infinite power? Produced by two of the worlds’ great opera companies I can’t imagine a more pertinent operatic response to the times we find ourselves in.”
While ENO has confirmed its schedule, the Met has yet to announce when the productions will reach its stage.
“This is really quite far down the road for us,” said the Met general manager Peter Gelb in an interview with the Associated Press.