Buckle up Wagnerians! The Ring Cycle is coming to Surrey
Starting in 2026, Grange Park Opera undertakes the mammoth feat of staging the complete Ring Cycle across four successive years.
Wagner’s epic Der Ring des Nibelungen (usually known simply as The Ring Cycle) starts in 2026 with Das Rheingold – the first performance will be on 14 June (followed by 20 & 26 June, and 5 & 10 July).
Cast and Creatives
Wotan ∙ James Rutherford
Fricka ∙ Christine Rice
Freia ∙ Rachel Nicholls
Donner ∙ Thomas Isherwood
Alberich ∙ David Stout
Mime ∙ Adrian Thompson
Fasolt ∙ Matthew Rose
Fafner ∙ David Shipley
Loge ∙ Mark Le Brocq
Erda ∙ Sara Fulgoni
Conductor ∙ Harry Sever
Director & Set design ∙ Charlie Edwards
Costume designer ∙ Gabrielle Dalton
Lighting designer ∙ Tim Mitchell
The thrilling new production from Charles Edwards, featuring a cast of outstanding British singers, comes exactly 150 years after the first Bayreuth performance.
Die Walküre will follow in 2027, Siegfried in 2028 and finishing with Götterdämmerung in 2029.
The Ring Cycle makes unprecedented theatrical demands. A magic helmet makes people disappear; a man is transformed into a snake; quickly followed by a toad. A ring of fire encircles a rock. In the end the Rhine overflows its banks, carrying with it both gods and humans, cleansing the world. The Ring Cycle is a cosmic undertaking, the supreme test for any opera company. Grange Park Opera is stepping up.
The remarkable acoustic of the five-tier opera house in Surrey has proved a perfect fit Wagner’s soundworld. The audience enjoys the intimacy of a compact theatre, whilst enveloped in the vibrations emerging from the 70-seat pit.
The Ring Cycle will be directed and designed by Charles Edwards, acclaimed last summer for his Tristan & Isolde. Conductors for the cycle will include Anthony Negus, one of the leading Wagnerian exponents of our day.
Das Rheingold will open with David Stout as the dwarf Alberich, stealing the gold to rule the world. James Rutherford will portray Wotan, ruler of the Gods, married to the Fricka of Christine Rice. Her sister Freia is played by Rachel Nicholls, our Brünnhilde for the remainder of the cycle. This outstanding UK cast is completed by Matthew Rose and David Shipley as the giants, outsmarted by Nicky Spence as Loge, the god of Fire.
Grange Park Opera is delighted to announce that the award-winning Orchestra of English National Opera (ENO) will join them as they begin their journey through Richard Wagner’s epic Ring Cycle in 2026: The collaboration follows on from Tchaikovsky’s Mazeppa (opens 14 June 2025), and previous seasons’ (2018 and 2019) performances of Hansel & Gretel, Un ballo in Maschera, Roméo et Juliette and Don Carlo. This dynamic creative partnership is set to reignite with Das Rheingold in summer 2026, the first part of Wagner’s legendary Ring Cycle.
Charles Edwards says this is a dream come true ‘Around 1980 I would visit my local library to borrow LPs: G&S, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Rigoletto … and then I heard scenes from The Ring. What was this? I became obsessed with Wagner and for 40 years, I’ve never stopped listening to it, thinking about it, dreaming up productions, imagining casts. I’ve listened to every great conductor plying his Wagnerian trade.
I don’t think of The Ring as a tragic, upsetting, world-ending misery. So much of it is funny. Wagner had a (usually ironic) sense of humour. He was the greatest, revolutionary real theatre-maker and he loved the idea of smashing things up to re-make them.
Aged 16 I won a school essay prize (writing about Wagner of course). The prize was money to travel. With my mother I travelled from Musselburgh to visit Bayreuth. We didn’t see any operas, but I saw models of the original designs. Wagner imagined The Ring in 1876 in those terms, and their beauty and mystery inspire me as was seen in my Tristan last year.
Later that year I got the train down to London alone to see Das Rheingold (standing ticket) at ROH – my first visit there. I returned to Edinburgh on the milk train.’
Founder of Grange Park Opera, Wasfi Kani CBE said, ‘We’ve been trying out Wagner for some time now – in our acoustic, in our pit and in audience reaction. Emboldened by the success of Die Walküre (2017), Flying Dutchman (2022) and Tristan & Isolde (2023), we took a deep collective breath and decided the time is ripe for the biggest challenge of all: his Ring Cycle. It is a hugely exciting development that we hope will move us to the next level of recognition.
During this 2025 season, the magnificent Orchestra of English National Opera are setting the pit ablaze in Tchaikovsky’s Mazeppa. We are so lucky to have these players embarking with us on our 2026 Ring Cycle. So, buckle up, Wagnerians!‘
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Booking dates as follows:
Donors to the Ring Ring: Tuesday 15 July 2025 at 10am
2026 Revels Annual Members: Tuesday 15 July 2025 at 10am
Booking for other levels of Annual Members, please see the website
Public booking: Early March 2026
14 July 2025 UPDATE
Grange Park Opera (GPO) is delighted to announce a five-year orchestral partnership with the award-winning Orchestra of English National Opera (ENO).
Commencing next summer (2026), this dynamic pairing will take audiences through Richard Wagner’s epic Ring Cycle with annual performances of each of the four operas: Das Rheingold (2026), Die Walküre (2027), Siegfried (2028) and Götterdämmerung (2029), before concluding with the entire Ring cycle in 2030.
The agreement will also see the Orchestra of ENO performing an additional opera each summer season, with Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin and Verdi’s ever-popular Don Carlo and Otello slated for Grange Park Opera’s ambitious programme.
For aficionados, the news carries added excitement as having the Orchestra of ENO play means that, once again, GPO will be the UK’s only summer season with a full 70-strong opera orchestra.