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The Bayreuth Festival's new Ring gets off to a promising start with a tautly directed Rheingold, but will we find out what it all means?

Melbourne Opera has produced a critically and popularly successful Das Rheingold, which bodes well for the planned development of a full Ring cycle over the next four years.

Deutsche Oper Berlin returns in rousing style with a pared-down, open-air Rheingold on its “Parkdeck”.

For any opera house, the production of a new Wagner Ring cycle is a huge undertaking and becomes a mission statement. For Finnish National Opera, its mission is to stage an all-Finnish Ring.

Daniel Barenboim led a performance of deliberate tempo with a great ensemble of singers.  Guy Cassiers‘ production, while visually stunning at times, does little to enhance the performance.

In an unusually convincing concert performance, Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Finnish National Opera emphasised the lyrical aspects of Wagner's Das Rheingold.

Jonathan Dove's lean reduction of Wagner’s score for just 18 players is performed at the Grimeborn Festival in Julia Burbach's staging. 

Hartmut Schörghofer's updated concert staging receives strong singing from everyone and a thrilling orchestral performance.

Carsen's scaled-down Ring makes a timely comeback with a melancholy message of decay.

Antonio Pappano and the Royal Opera Orchestra get the Ring cycle off to a blazing start; unusually, it's Lise Davidsen and the female cast who take the vocal honours.

At San Francisco Opera, conductor Donald Runnicles and a top-notch cast deliver a delicious Rheingold in Francesca Zambello's colorful production.

Wagner demands vocal resilience from the large cast of singers in Das Rheingold, but Willy Decker wants strong thigh muscles as well.

Robert Hayward was unafraid to 'go ugly' when need be in Jurowski's symphonically executed concert performance. 

With Andris Nelsons' withdrawal from Bayreuth last year, the BSO’s summer home, Tanglewood, became the venue for his Wagner with a concert performance of Das Rheingold

Oper Leipzig's Das Rheingold unfolds with no set changes, giving Wagner's music plenty of opportunities to fuel the imagination.

Alan Gilbert reaches a pinnacle at the end of his tenure at the New York Philarmonic.

John Lundgren, bullet-headed, youthful and overbearing, gave a world-class performance as Wotan. 

A festive air was palpable – the house was technically sold out – as the first of a set of three Ring cycles launched at the Wiener Staatsoper. 

The Hallé's oddly-ordered Ring arrives at the beginning with Das Rheingold.

The revival of Neil Armfield's Melbourne Ring is relaunched with a successful Rheingold, sensitively conducted by Pietari Inkinen, with an especially fine performance from Warwick Fyfe as Alberich.

Highly idiomatic and effective singing by Greer Grimsley, Denyce Graves and other cast members, coupled with inventive stagecraft wizardry, make the Minnesota Opera's first-ever Rheingold a memorable production.

In spite of some questionable staging, Lyric Opera of Chicago opened its Ring cycle on a strong note with a stellar cast, notably featuring Eric Owens’ role debut as Wotan.

Valery Gergiev conducts the Mariinsky Opera in a vocally strong Das Rheingold, a promising beginning to Edinburgh International Festival’s Ring in concert over the coming years.

Bayreuth's controversial Ring returns with a new conductor and a refreshed cast.

Sebastian Weigle leads a somewhat light-footed but satisfying account with a fine orchestra and good ensemble of singers in an architecturally stunning production.

Opera North's cycle offers a form of personal Wagner therapy: all four music dramas in concert performances, but with carefully choreographed video and lighting effects. 

Budapest's Wagner Festival opens with an excellent Rheingold in a skilful combination of singing, acting and projections.

The revival of Das Rheingold at Staatsoper Berlin was still marred by distracting use of dancers on stage, but musically it was a great success. 

Das Rheingold stages flawed American Ambitions in the first Ring Cycle in Washington DC. 

Saffron Opera Group's opening salvo bodes exceptionally well for their planned full cycle of concert performances of Wagner's Ring over the next two years. 

The first installment of Frank Castorf's controversial Ring is applauded on its 2015 revival at Bayreuth, but arguably the incessant visual action detracts from the appreciation of the music. 

Vienna Staatsoper revived Wagner's Ring Cycle with a splendid orchestral performance of Das Rheingold led by Sir Simon Rattle.

Gerd Grochowski made a stunning Wotan and Michael Bedjai a cheerful Loge in Landestheater Linz’s production of Das Rheingold.

Kriegenburg's staging of Wagner's Ring cycle begins with a visually appealing but intellectually empty Rheingold.

Earnest singing and dramatic insight made Das Rheingold with the Hong Kong Philharmonic a remarkable evening. 

Vladimir Jurowski is a wily programmer. Pairing a concert performance of Rachmaninov's The Miserly Knight with extracts from Das Rheingold seemed a shrewd move.

In this second year of Bayreuth's bicentennial Der Ring, Oleg Bryjak shines as an outstanding Alberich. Frank Castorf's production is striking but as yet incomprehensible.

Wagner’s music proves that one does not need elaborate sets nor famous singers for a satisfying performance.

This production came together brilliantly to illustrate the story of Das Rheingold. But the star of the show was MüPa’s Béla Bartók Hall, with its extraordinary acoustic.

Fulham Opera's intense, beautiful, powerful opening to their Ring cycle at the lovely St John's Church in Fulham was a privilege to watch, and promises well for all remaining nights.

Putting on a Ring cycle is normally considered a major undertaking for any opera company. For a mid-sized provincial opera company, the idea of staging the whole cycle in a weekend seems barely short of insane. But that’s what Opéra de Dijon are doing – Das Rheingold and Die Walküre last night, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung tonight, and it just had to be seen.

Some Ring cycles are based on ideological concepts; Seattle Opera’s current Ring cycle is based on a place. That place is the Pacific Northwest of the United States, home to such extraordinary natural beauty that stage director Stephen Wadsworth has deemed it fit for the gods.

A Beethoven cycle last year, The Ring this year: what will Daniel Barenboim bring to the 2014 Proms? Perhaps, given the recent success of extracts both at the Proms and at Lincoln Center Festival, the smart money is on Karlheinz Stockhausen’s 29-hour, seven-opera cycle Licht. Then again, perhaps not.

Quite simply, it’s the largest scale event in all of opera. With 18 hours of music in a 3,800 seat house, Wagner’s Ring Cycle at the Met is a giant, lavish undertaking – all starting with that famous E flat chord: starting from the quietest of pianissimo double bass notes and building for nearly four minutes before it explodes into the melody of the Rhinemaidens.

The first lesson I learnt from this evening’s stunning performance by Opera North of Das Rheingold to a completely full Hall One at the Sage is that however much you listen to Wagner's opera, absolutely nothing can prepare you for the physical and emotional impact of seeing a live performance, with the sheer power of the orchestra and the dramatic force of the music.

In the run up to their widely anticipated concert staging of Wagner's Das Rheingold this summer, Opera North are providing us with a number of events at their Howard Assembly Room which aim to explore different aspects of the Ring Cycle.

Read our review of Robert Lepage's production of Das Rheingold by Wagner, in its 2010 broadcast from the Met Opera in New York.

Eine fast völlig neue Besetzung bringt frischen Wind in Sven-Eric Bechtolfs statische Inszenierung.