(Photo Credit: Frances Marshall, Marshall Light studios / Sara Porter)

The Ring Cycle is a massive undertaking, one that requires an opera company with a built-in infrastructure to do it.

But it is also the peak of opera production and one that every director / manager dreams of doing. So despite, the massive challenge it entailed, Regents Opera’s artistic director Ben Woodward, who is also a conductor, pianist, vocal coach and arranger, and stage director Caroline Staunton, who is a staff director at the Staatsoper Berlin, could not be deterred from putting on a historic, independently-produced “Ring” in the U.K.”

The project, which opens on Feb. 9, 2025, was so popular that the company had to add another performance of “Götterdämmerung” to satiate audience’s passion for Wagner’s magnus opus. OperaWire spoke to the two about the “Ring.”

Opera Wire: Can you tell us a bit about Regents Opera and how it came about?

Ben Woodward: I founded Fulham Opera with a selection of others in 2010-11 and we were based in St. John’s Church in Fulham. We started doing opera in there, starting with “Amahl and the Night Visitors,” a little Christmas opera, and then a baritone friend of mine – he sang the middle king in that – said “That was great fun, let’s do ‘Rheingold’ – I want to be Alberich.” I spot a good idea when one’s thrown at me, so that started that. And when you do a successful “Rheingold,” the question then asked is, “Are you going to do the rest?” So we did our first little Ring Cycle in there with me playing the piano for the whole thing in 2014, and then in 2020 a guy called Nick Heath who ran something called Regents Opera (also called Opera a la carte – mainly touring opera around English country houses) wanted to pass it on so it had a legacy, so I essentially bought Regents Opera, the name and the client list off him. And although Regents Park exists, it doesn’t have that geographical connection that Fulham Opera had and so Regents Opera seemed the best name with which to carry on. So that’s when I started doing these insane things. In the meantime, I moved to Berlin, met Caroline – whether she regrets it or not I don’t know (laughs) – and she agreed to do this Ring Cycle with us and that’s why we’re here now.

OW: What’s the vision for Regents Opera?

BW: The vision for the company is: we continue with our country house opera stuff – this year we’ve done “Don Giovanni” and next year we’ll do “La bohème” around a variety of country houses in England and indeed in France. But we also do very large opera productions that probably belong in much bigger opera houses in an interesting, immediate, intimate way – and that’s what we’ve managed to do with this Ring. We’re doing it “in the round” (stage space), and so you’re right next to the people you’re listening to, which makes it very exciting. What happens after the Ring is still up for discussion. As I say, I know we’re doing “La bohème” next year on tour and we’ll just see how things go – the Ring is all-encompassing by its very nature.

OW: Does the Ring then go onto other cities, or will you be putting it on in London only?

BW: The nature of the spaces that we’ve been using means that there is the potential to pack together what we need and move it somewhere and then tweak it depending on other venues. So while there is not yet aggressive planning to bring it to Berlin or bring it to other places there is certainly the potential for it, which is something we have talked about before – but at this point it’s like a baby, we just want to get it out.

OW: Is this Ring doing anything in particular to cultivate interest in opera with future generations/younger people?

BW: We’re working on every possible marketing strategy we can – we need it to be full and we’re always looking for new audiences. So we’ve gone from the Freemason’s Hall – they’ve had a change of management so we’ve had to move, sadly – to York Hall in Tower Hamlets. It’s an interesting space: it’s a Ring in a boxing ring essentially – York Hall is the home of British boxing. I don’t know if we’ll be doing any silly marketing with boxing gloves, but we’ll see… Caroline hates the idea (laughs). Tower Hamlets is an interesting part of London, we’ll be marketing it to the people there, we’ve got ideas about an education project and we’re talking to people/schools about how that might work. We’re hoping to make this as inclusive and interesting as possible to all people, basically.

OW: Putting on the whole Ring cycle is a challenge in all sorts of ways. What was your reaction when you found out that the Freemason’s Hall (your original venue) could no longer host “Götterdämmerung,” the last opera in the cycle?

BW: They were very generous to us and they were very helpful in terms of the first three operas, but, you know, much like with governments or any other institutions when managements change, things change and it became such that in order to put on the Ring cycle not only do you need the performance nights but you also need a vast amount of time in the space to rehearse it. And the new management didn’t feel they were able to accommodate that. And that’s worked much better actually because it meant that it worked with Caroline’s schedule – she wouldn’t have been able to do it otherwise.

OW: Your Ring cycle opens in February 2025 and it’s already sold very well (we’re in October 2024). You’ve even had to add an extra performance of “Götterdämmerung” due to box office demand. Impressive results for one of the most demanding set of operas out there. What do you think is making this such a success?

BW: The immersive nature of it and the quality of the singing and the storytelling – I blame you for much of this (to Caroline, laughing)… “blame” isn’t quite the right word for it.

Caroline Staunton: When you’re doing a fringe opera production it’s important you cut corners, so, for instance, the venues that we’re using at the moment, there’s no potential to fly in scenery or to do epic scene changes and even the lighting has to be quite reduced because hanging points are limited and so on. But we haven’t scrimped on musical quality because his (Ben Woodward’s) arrangements are absolutely fantastic and his conducting is absolutely brilliant and we use top notch singers, and we do it without a single cut so people compare it to the Jonathan Dove versions, but I mean, he cut them and made drastic changes, they’re not authentic to Wagner, not true to it. We captured as much as we can and when you don’t have much set or location then you put the work into the people and make sure that the emotional journeys of the characters are as vividly realised as possible, and when you have people that are capable of doing that as well as singing the crap out of it… Then you also don’t have that distance of the orchestra pit, the performance happens around it, so you can hear the voice leaving the singer’s body if you’re in the front row and that makes it different and enthralling – you experience it differently. In many ways, once you’ve seen it, it kind of sells itself, it’s just getting them through the door in the first place – that’s the hard bit.

OW: You’ve re-orchestrated the entire Ring Cycle – that’s a huge undertaking. Can you tell us a bit more about the process, how you went about it, any challenges encountered?

BW: I keep it all, it just alters who actually plays it. I keep it as close as possible to the original Wagner. I mean, it is a labour of love. I have now finished “Götterdämmerung,” it’s all done. I usually spend three hours most mornings, I use a program called Dorico and I type the whole thing into it and I try to alter as little as possible, which might sound ridiculous but… So if the original is two clarinets running in thirds, and I’ve only got the one clarinet… if the clarinet is on top I’ll put the oboe underneath it so the oboe will then play it in thirds with the clarinet. Whereas if it’s two oboes in thirds I’ll keep the oboe on top and I’ll put the clarinet underneath to still make the thirds but you’ll get the sonority of the original. So I try to keep the set of colours as close as possible to the original, by being as reasonable as possible. There are other things like for instance, at the beginning of “Valkyrie,” Wagner splits the cellos six ways quite near the beginning and so what I’ve done is I’ve kept the cello on the top because you hear the top voice and then put the rest of the parts into the other string parts because I’ve only got so many strings to play with. So that’s kind of what the process is – it’s one of condensing… it feels like it might be imaginative but it’s not as imaginative as you might think, it’s just a re-arrangement of what we do. I’ve also taken out the percussion and the harps (which the director constantly moans about, says Caroline, laughing). The main reason for that is actually financial, you always end up spending twice as much on freelance percussion or freelance harpists, they charge you so much extra in taxis or whatever.

CS: And the space needed… if you’re going to do percussion then you do it properly so then space is needed for that. And we never really had a generous orchestra space – the  string players are amazing to be that cramped together, and we have a very good brass section and they do make noise, so to be that close together… they really are on board with this, it’s a love project for them as well because the circumstances are not as comfortable as you would like to offer them.

BW: Oh, they have to play out of their skins, they have to play out of their skins. It just wouldn’t work otherwise.

OW: Funding constraints often cause difficulties in maintaining standards – how do you deal with such issues?

BW: It’s on a knife edge. Opera is always financially extremely difficult to make work. I did an MBA in 2020 with the idea of “maybe I can learn how to make opera pay for itself” and the fact of the matter is it doesn’t. You put money in and you get opera out, you don’t get any money back. So, we’ve had lots of generous donors… my main job now that I’ve finished the score is to talk to all those donors and say “You know those £100 pounds you gave us for ‘Siegfried?’ Do you think you could give us £400 now that it’s the whole Ring?” It’s that kind of thing. I did write an Arts Council grant this week, and I have no idea if that was time well spent or not, we’ll find out in nine weeks’ time.

CS: That’s why the repertoire system is so strong in Germany because when it comes to a single performance of a single show dependant on chorus, orchestra, stage technicians, etc., there’s no performance in Germany that actually covers the cost of itself through ticket sales, whether it’s sold out or not. So repertoire pieces can quickly be put back up and don’t take the same performance investment which is why it would be a good idea to keep this Ring and try to revive it further down. The issue is that with venue rental rehearsals cost and even just lighting a show… a two hour show takes quite a considerable time to set up, and a sixteen hour show like the Ring takes considerably longer. And it costs money just to look at light.

BW: The costs are astronomical.

CS: But when Ben took on this project he was absolutely adamant that the singers get a proper salary and the musicians get a proper salary which of course adds hugely to the costs but it takes any amateurism out of the entire equation. And this is an incredibly professionally run project. It’s just that I think Ben got a few sleepless nights.

BW: Just a few. But yes, the fees we are offering are roughly commensurate with Holland Park fees. When I first spoke to our Wotan (or our late Wotan, Keel), I asked him what Holland Park would give him for doing a Wotan – he told me the figure and I shook his hand off. So that’s what we’re aiming at. There are these wonderful singers who are very serious about their art and are able to work with someone who demands really quite a lot of them.

OW: You both live in Berlin, Germany. What lessons are there – if any – for opera in the UK?

CS: Here in Germany opera is seen as a job, not as something that’s elite or lofty or exclusive. It takes so many different types of employees to make opera happen and because there is this wonderful quantity of it, it keeps going and it keeps moving, and we ought to keep thinking and communicating. You get those moments during a rehearsal with orchestra where you encounter the specialness of it and the sublimity of what you’re doing and then you do think, “yes, my job is a privilege” but also my job involves very often fourteen hour days and constant compromises and discussions and planning and then reversing the planning when a singer is sick or whatever. Everything is always on such a delicate balance but here it’s just very much treated as a job and there’s a seriousness and an authenticity that goes with it and people don’t waste their time thinking about how special they are because they get to work in something like that. There is this lovely knowledge that there is so much of it happening and there’s also an interdisciplinary support as well. There’s huge awareness of what’s happening in other houses and what other people are doing, not with a jealous eye but an interest in terms of “how are they telling that story, how is that singer doing in that role” and so on. It feels like there is a larger community and it’s lovely how you meet the same people again and again in different times and spaces and you do bond over these things but in a very real, practical way, which is not so much my experience in Ireland or in England where it just feels a bit more of an exception, perhaps because there isn’t that much of it. In these places there’s much more that stagione idea that we’re all here for this one thing and therefore this one thing is the only thing that we need to think of. Whereas at the moment for the last three or four weeks I’ve had three different operas in my head at any one time because I’ve been working on all three of them at the same time, including “Götterdämmerung” so actually four. So you just need to find a way to stay sane and get on with it. Obviously there is that lovely work that you can do at summer festivals, I’ve been to Salzburg a few times and so on and it’s lovely when you can rock up and only think about “Don Giovanni” for instance. So for example, in the last couple of months I’ve had a Janáček piece, a Strauss piece, I’m starting with a Puccini piece and then Wagner so I’ve had all those four guys in my head for the last couple of months at the same time, but that’s the version of working in opera that I particularly love. They all make you crazy by the way, and also I’m an overly emotional person so I’ve been known to cry in rehearsals (laughs).

OW: How about financially, any particular differences between Germany and the UK?

CS: There is more work available in Germany and the hours are a bit unregulated. What makes my job difficult is… I’m officially the regie-assistente or house director but unfortunately rehearsals are rehearsals and most of the time you don’t rehearse more than eight hours a day, but then other things take up the other hours of the day, mostly rehearsing the other pieces. We’re very unregulated, our job is very undefined and in many ways you decide yourself what makes you good at your job which means putting in the extra hours, being at all the lighting rehearsals and all that kind of thing. And I’d imagine in England it’s much more controlled in terms of how many hours you’re actually working and it’s also probably better paid.

BW: The thing is, you’re on a salary though…

CS: And during Covid that was amazing because the one thing you couldn’t do is be in a rehearsal room with people which is literally what I live for but the salary kept coming – they protected us all, it was really extraordinary, all the freelance people, otherwise it would have been a disaster.

BW: The nice thing about the German “fest” system of course is that all the singers and all the music staff get a salary, thirteen months a year, and the ensemble singers as well – it’s quite a different thing. I did at one point do a projection of what it would cost to create a British “fest” system, in the UK. Back of an envelope numbers… I still reckon that to make one “fest” theatre in every county in the UK it would still cost much less than what we spent on the Olympics, but you know, it’s just a mad thing… it’s, you know, priorities of different countries…

OW: So, Caroline, as a Stage Director, it’s more up to you then, how you go about it and how many hours you put in for rehearsals and that sort of thing?

CS: It depends on the time that you have, and obviously it depends on the availability of the singers, so the frustrating thing for instance is when you’re trying to revive a piece and the main role doesn’t come until two days before you’re about to be on stage, or each piece has its own circumstances and you just decide what’s the best way to deal with it or indeed to throw a fit and say, “there are lots of changes here.” But then you also decide how much time you get on stage and obviously they want to perform as much as possible but there are certain shows where for example in order to get the set up done in time you can’t rehearse in the morning if you’re going to have that show on in the evening so that becomes a lost opportunity to rehearse on the stage. Sometimes you can rehearse on the stage running with half the sets and not all of the sets, or not with the dangerous part of the sets that you want to teach the people how to use and all that sort of thing. So it’s a constant negotiation and you have to constantly keep your eye on the ball and then just somehow manage to get through everything. And as I say the Strauss opera that I’m working on at the moment, “Die Frau ohne Schatten” is just long, it’s very, very long and there are very many scenes and then on top of that. There are dancers and there are extras and there are children actors as well at the end, and I’m trying to rehearse every aspect of the show so I’m not yet managing any sort of a run through – that’s what we’re running on Tuesday when we’re on stage but then it’s only once with piano, once with orchestra and then the next one is a performance and so everyone is feeling a little bit like “right, okay” (laughs).

OW: So do you normally feel you get enough rehearsal time?

BW: There’s never enough rehearsal time!

CS: No, there’s never enough rehearsal time. Also, I hate performance, I just love rehearsals, I’m like Stanislavski. Stanislavski rehearsed “Otello” for two years and then never let it actually perform because he felt it wasn’t good enough (laughs). I adore rehearsals but when it comes to performances I’m a nervous wreck because there’s nothing more I can do, it just has to happen.

OW: Is this your first collaboration with Regents Opera?

CS: Yes, I got to know Ben during lockdown and then coming out of lockdown we started doing opera evenings in a wine bar close to the opera house in the centre. Ben’s really good with music and he was coaching them on arias and I came in with just some basic scenic approaches and we are both of the belief that once you combine a scenic element or a staged element with the singing element than the singing also improves. There’s something about refocusing your attention on the text and on the context of what it is that you’re singing that it instantly becomes less of a listen-to-my-wonderful-voice kind of experience and much more of a theatrical moment of a character really establishing something or saying something about themselves. So Ben saw that happening and we realised that in the rehearsal room as well we communicate very well with each other and we weirdly have the same goals and we overlap in terms of where it needs to be. How much of an impasse there can be in a rehearsal room if you and the musical director don’t see eye to eye. If the Stage Director and the Music Director don’t see eye to eye and don’t have a relationship everything just takes six times longer and then no one’s happy as well with the outcome, so that’s an absolute serendipity that we agree so much artistically and what the goal is and where we want to bring singers with their singing and their interpretation.

BW: Yes, it seems to work.

CS: Also, I’m not a radical director – at least not yet, or not with the Ring – so it’s not like I say “Can we stop playing here” and I need to have four minutes of silence because I have to do some dumb show acting, so none of those kinds of demands. Also in general, if I ask for something Ben is usually quite amenable and if he’s not amenable then he explains the error of my ways…

BW: And vice-versa…
CS: And vice-versa…

OW: What’s the main idea or inspiration behind this Ring?

CS: So Wagner used this idea of Gesamtkunstwerk which is the idea of the coming together of the various elements of what it takes to stage successful opera which is the musical element but also the text element and the scenic element and the movement element and how it all comes together to create this total work of art. So I’ve got a further take on this artwork theme which is to use the idea of the modernist art gallery to look at this notion of what happens once an object is presented for contemplation as an art work. So there’s the object and then there is what we called “plinthing.” In the act of plinthing the object transforms itself and offers itself as an artwork object and I’m interested then in how the subject encounters it and also what happens to the subject during the encountering of the artwork, how it changes them. So that’s the central metaphor for what I’ve been doing, this idea of the “Rheingold” in itself but also as a source of power and also related to the experience of love. Specifically – and this is recurrent throughout the entire Ring cycle – there is the idea that the test of how much you love something is how you are once you lose it. It’s extraordinary, I hadn’t fully appreciated how sad “Götterdämmerung” is. Siegfried in our production is not a traditional brainless hero just looking to stick his sword into things, he’s actually a very damaged, troubled man-child as a result of the origin story of his parents and the involvement of Wotan who’s also lost children, he lost his son – he was involved in the murder of his own son and then had to sacrifice Brünnhilde through pride but also through grief. Then you get this incredible villain in Hagen, who’s Alberich’s offspring, very much in counterpoint to what Sigmund was for Wotan. And something we’ve done throughout as well is that we have the black Alberich and the white Wotan, so Wotan has always seen himself as a kind of reflection of Alberich, one is white, one is black but the two of them are inextricably related. Then there’s the son of Alberich, very much the counterpoint to Sigmund and then just working through this inevitability – talk about spoilers, when you call your opera “Twilight of the Gods” you’re not in too much doubt about how all of this ends, you know.

OW: Are you working with a set designer and a costume designer?

CS: It’s one person in charge of both, stage and costumes. I have quite a lot of input into the stage designs because especially on a reduced budget it needs to be dramaturgically very astute, so I tend to conceive it and she makes it looks good. And then the costumes are very much her ideas. Then of course there is the make-up troupe. This is part dramaturgical and part… well, if you have eight Valkyries and they all want to look hot, well, you need make-up artists.

OW: Why should audiences come to watch/listen to this Ring?

BW: The singing and the story are both fantastic and it is complete, from the first note of “Rheingold” to the last note of “Götterdämmerung” we’re not making any cuts, it is the whole Ring cycle, fully staged, with orchestra, in an interesting space, done “in the round.” It’s the only full Ring cycle that’s happening in the UK next year, there are no other Ring cycles.

OW: What’s been the best part of directing the Ring with Regents Opera so far?

CS: The best thing has been the work with the performers. I come from a teaching background – I used to teach poetry and Shakespeare and that kind of thing – so I’ve always just loved to see that element of how… the act of interpreting a text, and using words and language and seeing how that changes into an attitude or a motivation or a mission. Singing is such an incredibly athletic, almost Olympian activity but then when you are on top of that you can also then get through to actioning text and using text in a way where there is genuine connection between people. It’s the nicest thing about staging it in this way rather than in the traditional proscenium with the orchestra pit – in the traditional way there is always the concern of the voices having to carry and go out to the front, but here, because the orchestra is actually behind the singers it means that I can be completely reckless with where I’m telling them to stand and which direction to sing in and to keep it moving and so on. Also the text itself is so fascinating, I think Wagner is also quite underrated as a librettist and one of the major artistic features of the Ring are the alliteration games that he plays throughout. On top of that his word choice in so many moments is just incredible, and then the marriage of this poetic element to the leitmotifs, which is one of the most significant features of the orchestral scores (apart from their brilliance). The leitmotifs are these recurring patterns of melodies that are linked to specific events or sometimes specific objects – there’s the spear motif, there’s the curse motif, there’s the love motif, there are lots of motifs but it just gives you so much information to incorporate into the staging. And again, we’ve reduced down on big flying scenery but we try to get as much from the score and the text into the staging and you then find that a gesture can be as meaningful as an expensive piece of scenery or timing a look between two people at the right moment or that kind of thing. And then Ben’s provided me with singers who are not only up for this challenge but are very capable of fulfilling it. So, that’s my favourite part, yes.

BW: Rehearsals… (laughs) This thing has been an enormous project. Creating the score is one thing and then seeing the whole growth of it – it’s been a huge project, from testing every possible bit of everyone, and making this whole thing work, to making sure all the relationships work, to making sure that everyone is doing a nice job and everyone is as happy as we can possibly keep them and to make it happen in such a way that everyone’s paid and we all make a tremendous, extraordinary piece of art with it. The reason for doing this has been to tell the Ring story and for me to conduct it with magnificent singers and a fantastic artistic partner. That’s what this enterprise has been about and it’s been a huge enterprise. Don’t know what will be next, but we’ll figure something out.
CS: Sleep!

BW: Sleep, what’s that?!