Interview: “It’s An Extraordinary Experience”: Conductor Ben Woodward on Buying Regents Opera and Completing Wagner’s RING CYCLE
Larger houses worldwide have had to suspend their Rings after the third opera, but Regents Opera will complete their cycle.
An intrepid British fringe opera company and its dauntless conductor-arranger have taken on a bold project that has defeated any number of high-profile companies.
In their groundbreaking Der Ring des Nibelungen, Regents Opera conductor Ben Woodward and his director Caroline Staunton are bringing Wagner into the 21st century with an innovative distillation of Wagner’s original four-opera cycle.
Having met the challenge to pare down to a 22-piece orchestra, to which has been added a stellar cast, Woodward and Staunton's first three installments have had immense success in the UK this past season. However, unlike other major companies that have had to shelve the final opera in the cycle, Regents will culminate their series by performing Götterdämmerung next month.
Photo Credit: Steve Gregson
The cycle has been a feat of dexterity, flexibility and resolve. Woodward is proud of his hugely ambitious and innovative project, which he himself has adapted. The details of how it developed are impressive.
Woodward founded Fulham Opera in 2011. At the time, Woodward was a church organist and, thanks to the approval of an “amenable priest” and “a magical acoustic,” he decided to take the plunge. “I can do things here,” he decided. He took the leap to Wagner with a fully staged Das Rheingold in which he played piano, which led to an entire Ring cycle in 2014. “That put the company on the map,” he says.
By 2019 he had assembled an orchestra for Die Meistersinger. Then, when most things came to a halt with the pandemic in 2020, Woodward started playing piano for Regents Opera, a touring company performing potboiler operas in English country houses. The person running the company asked Woodward if he would like to buy the company. “For £1,000,” says Woodward, incredulous. Fulham Opera became Regents Opera.
After moving to Berlin, Woodward met Staatsoper staff director Caroline Staunton, whom he describes as “a walking opera encyclopedia…brilliant at directing singing actors, who could create clear storytelling and beautiful relationships onstage, especially with an up close and personal audience.” Staunton told Woodward that if he revisited The Ring, she would be happy to direct it.
But conditions were not ideal in an arts world still dealing with pandemic fallout, “despite audiences of 12 people in a wine bar.”. Nonetheless, the idea of a complete Ring cycle was born. Woodward set about creating an arrangement for 22 instruments, but ideally, “as many strings as we could afford.” A challenge, but Woodward was up to the task. “That is the project,” he says, “people appreciate it in a whole different way.”
Photo Credit: Steve Gregson
The first three operas in the cycle, Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, and Siegfried, were performed in 2022, 2023, and 2024. Deciding the fourth and longest opera, Götterdämmerung, would not be appropriate on its own, Woodward planned to include it while reviving the other three, in January and February of 2025. Creating an abridged form of Götterdämmerung, the most sizable portion of the project, was daunting. Larger houses worldwide have had to suspend their Rings after the third opera, but Regents Opera will complete their cycle.
What’s also different is the new venue: York Hall in Bethnal Green, “the home of British boxing,” Woodward adds with a laugh. Doing The Ring in a “ring” in a 1,000-seat house in the round with a catwalk stage, if more intimate and up close for the audience, is “interesting, but awkward to keep together, with the audience on all sides and the orchestra at one end. It is a mad project.”
How does he do it? “I’ve worked three hours most mornings for the past three years to get all four operas done. The key, with the sheer numbers of notes, is having a good proofreader.” Other than that, Woodward fulfills all the roles, including, inevitably, fundraiser. As casting director, he chooses all the singers. “I’ve grown to understand how singers should sound in a given role.”
Woodward’s outstanding cast includes Catharine Woodward as Brünnhilde; Ralf Lukas as Wotan/Wanderer; Peter Furlong as Siegfried; Oliver Gibbs as Alberich; Ingeborg Børch as Fricka; and Simon Wilding as Hagen.
All his efforts have driven Woodward toward the most important aspect of all: paving the way for him to conduct. “I have to conduct this music. It lives through me.” That is the kind of passion that can help create something as unique and groundbreaking as Regents Opera’s Ring. But it can get complicated.
“It’s amazing, from one day to the next not knowing which opera you’re about to start working on,” he says. “But I’m hugely pleased with the direction. It’s brilliant, moving, disturbing. The opening scene of Rheingold is very dark. Strange things at the end of Act 2 of Götterdämmerung. Brünnhilde makes out with Hagen. All in all, a fascinating process.”
Perhaps it’s the orchestra that works the hardest, with the burden of a full score to perform in such small numbers. Stamina-wise, the six-hour Götterdämmerung entails the largest amount of labour from the musicians. Due to the missing harps, the string players have virtually no rest.
“At the end, they said, ‘I don’t want to play another note.’ The horns and Wagner tubas are totally spent. The oboist said, ‘I have no chops left,’” Woodward says. “But it’s joyous, getting to know the musicians better individually than with the full complement of players.”
Despite this, according to Woodward, the largely freelance musicians are grateful to be able to do a solid patch of work. “That counts for a lot,” Woodward says finally. “It’s an extraordinary experience.”
Ring Cycle will be at York Hall, Old Ford Road, Bethnal Green, E2 9PJ. Cycle One: 9, 11, 13 and 16 February. Cycle Two: 23, 25, 27 Feb and 2 March
Main Photo Credit: Sara Porter
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