Like Alberich, I am irresistibly drawn to to the Ring. But instead of 100 I’ve got 18 musicians…

Ben Woodward spent lockdown rearranging the Ring Cycle for an orchestra one-fifth the size of Wagner’s. As Regents Opera opens Das Rheingold, he explains how, and why, and that he still has 400 more hours to go

‘Beware the Ring,” sings Erda the omniscient Earth mother in the final scene of Das Rheingold. Her warning is conspicuously ignored by the gods, men, valkyries, giants and dragons who inhabit the world that Wagner creates – and destroys – over the course of the four operas in his Ring cycle.

It has also almost destroyed many musicians, and indeed opera companies, who, failing to heed Erda, have fallen under its spell.

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