Regents Opera's slimmed-down Ring Cycle - a talk with Ben Woodward.

The Wagner Committee's Ross Whitelaw will interview Ben Woodward, Artistic Director of London's Regents Opera about his slimmed-down Ring.

Ben Woodward is founder and Artistic Director of Regents Opera in London, who are about to undertake a complete Ring Cycle – quite the feat for a “fringe” opera company.

Regents Opera was founded - as Fulham Opera - in 2011, with a performance of Das Rheingold fully-staged in a small 120-seat church, with piano accompaniment, provided by Woodward.

After this huge success, the company moved forward and presented a pair of complete Ring Cycles in 2014, with piano, adding just a flute and a horn for the latter two operas. That company has, over the past decade, by way of various productions of Verdi, Strauss, other Wagner (Holländer and Die Meistersinger), now come full circle to give fringe opera productions of the Ring once again, though this time, in an arrangement for 22 instruments (single wind, 3 horns playing 2 parts, trumpet, bass trombone and 12 strings plus organ), which will be fully staged in the round (is this the first Ring in the round??) in York Hall in London’s east end, by Irish director Caroline Staunton of the Staatsoper Berlin, and conducted by Woodward himself.

Ben Woodward was a student at Trinity College, Cambridge, then the Guildhall School of Music in London, and has worked at the Staatsoper Hannover, and Landestheater Flensburg and the ROH. He now lives in Berlin with his wife Catharine, who, having just sung Gerhilde at Bayreuth (and will be doing so again next year), in this Ring Cycle will sing Brünnhilde.