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The chance to watch their finely gauged interpretation unfold on the Royal Festival Hall platform was a privilege.

We start with a triumphant Royal Opera debut from Stuart Skelton, we close with Nina Stemme at her finest; a thrilling orchestral performance links the two. A memorable Walküre.

Der fliegende Holländer at Leeds Town Hall shows Opera North at its most exciting, in a production conducted by Richard Farnes, with Béla Perencz and Alwyn Mellor.

A brilliantly successful performance of Götterdämmerung by Opera North to bring its four-year Ring to a fiery close. 

Opera North's La Fanciulla del West, directed by Aletta Collins, contains a bold performance from Alwyn Mellor as Minnie, and a powerful Ramerrez in Rafael Rojas.

Wagner famously idealized the concept of the “Gesamtkunstwerk”, a total work of art that incorporates many artistic media into a single piece. He would have appreciated Seattle Opera’s production of Götterdämmerung.

After Sunday night’s breathtaking Das Rheingold, it was difficult to imagine Die Walküre could be more beautiful or committed. Seattle Opera outdid themselves with this second installment of the Ring cycle, which featured energetic playing and singing, gorgeous stage pictures, and devastatingly believable acting from all of the singers.

If you've been brought up with the Judaeo-Christian ideal of an all-powerful, all-good God, Norse mythology can come as a bit of a shock. Wotan, the father of the gods, is philandering, deceitful, power-hungry, sentimental, violent and ultimately weak - the gamut of human frailties writ large.

Opera North’s concert staging of Wagner’s Ring Cycle continued last night with Die Walküre, the “first night” proper of the cycle after the “preliminary evening” of Das Rheingold.

History has cast a complex light on Wagner’s music and on Wagner the man. But Tristan & Isolde (Wagner’s enormous vision of erotic love) is an opera that can still resonate today. Nietzsche referred to its “dangerous fascinations”, “spine-tingling and blissful infinity“ and “voluptuousness”. This was Grange Park Opera’s first foray into Wagnerian opera.