Why Opera North decided to stage an opera which lasts 16 hours

After seven years in the planning stage, Opera North next week embark on the ambitious project of six complete cycles of Richard Wagner’s epic drama, Der Ring des Nibelungen, that will tour England for the first time since its composition 140 years ago.

Opening with two complete performances in Leeds Town Hall, the cycle of four operas, that last almost 16 hours, will have absorbed a 175 rehearsals occupying 600 hours, involving an orchestra of over 100 musicians, 28 soloists and 44 chorus members.

“We have to turn back the clock to the period when the Grand Theatre was closed for renovations, and we were forced to give opera in concert performances,” recalls the company’s Music Director, Richard Farnes. One of those was a staging of Richard Strauss’s Salome with a symphony orchestra. “It sparked the idea of staging Das Rheingold, the introductory opera of The Ring,” says Farnes. “And from that grew the prospect of performing one of the following three operas in each of the subsequent years.

“When we performed Salome, I had the idea of giving the audience some theatrical feel by indicating places in the score where soloists could come on and depart from the stage. That seemed to work very well, and when we progressed the idea of Rheingold, we asked the stage lighting expert, Peter Mumford, to come up with some innovative ideas of presentation.”

Taking up the story, Mumford recalls that he had the idea of a ‘fully staged concert version’ built around a visual backdrop projected on triple screens above the orchestra. They would convey the ongoing flow of the story, and also incorporate related texts so as to concentrate attention on the music rather than the many effects Wagner originally intended.

“Stage props and costumes were not part of this minimalist approach, but we would still have the characters moving around the front of the stage so as to interact with one another. It has been a learning curve, and I came to realise I would have done things differently if I started again. So for these complete cycles you will see a revised version of the first two operas – Rheingold and Walkure.”

“It was important from the outset,” stresses Farnes, “that this was not intended for the people who form the ‘Ring Club’, and who just go around the world listening to it. This one is for those who are coming to Wagner straight off the street without any knowledge of the story.”

Though the work is well-known in the world’s major and large opera houses, six consecutive cycles must have been exceedingly rare. Opera North is taking it to Nottingham, Salford, Gateshead, and to London’s South Bank where all 10,000 seats were sold within three hours of booking opening.

For the composer this story of averace and murder occupied much of his mature life, and eventually needed the building of a new opera house capable of containing the enormous orchestra required, together with the creation of a new breed of solo singers who had the stamina to dominate the orchestra and to be on stage for such long periods in technically demanding arias.

That has required Opera North to bring a together highly experienced Wagner singers from around the world including the famous Estonian tenor, Mati Turi; two of the great character singers of our time, Mats Almgren from Sweden and Jo Pohlheim from Germany; the bass James Creswell and the much acclaimed Kelly Cae Hogan from the United States, and many from the UK who have created an overseas career singing in Wagner performances.

“To Wagner an orchestra was to be heard but not seen,” says Farnes, “but we have rather turned things around and have the players on view with theatre lighting, an aspect audiences have said they particularly enjoy. At the same time we have achieved everything he intended by having nothing between the singers and the audience.” For Farnes this marks the end of 12 distinguished years at the musical helm of the company, a period that has seen the orchestra taken to new levels of technical achievements.

• Limited tickets for the first Leeds cycle starting on April 23, all others are sold out.