Longborough Festival Opera has announced plans to develop a new Wagner’s Ring cycle, starting in 2019 and culminating in the full cycle in 2023.
Longborough, with its 500-seat theatre near Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire, is celebrated for its performances of Richard Wagner’s work. In Wagner’s bicentenary year of 2013 Longborough Festival Opera was the only UK company to host a full cycle.
All productions in Longborough’s new Ring will be created especially for the company. Royal Opera House head staff director Amy Lane, who revived Kasper Holten’s Don Giovanni and Jonathan Kent’s Tosca for the Royal Opera, will direct the entire cycle.
She said, “the Ring cycle is the most epic of tales with a score that’s searing, desperate, sublime and so perfectly unfathomable. What an honour it is to set foot upon this glorious pathway and to commence this journey with Longborough.”
Longborough’s music director Anthony Negus will conduct. Auditions will be held in London in spring 2018. Applications are open at the Longborough Festival Opera web site and will close on 15 January 2018.