Regents Opera are staging their first Ring cycle not in an opera house but in the spiritual home of British boxing in the East End of London. The counterintuitives don’t end there. There’s no Wagnerian-scale orchestra of 90-plus players in this Ring either; instead, just 22 heroically committed musicians give their all in a skilfully reduced version rescored by conductor Ben Woodward.
Nor is the nearly 15 hours of action mounted on a conventional stage. Instead, this Ring is performed in the round, in an in-your-face way that grips the attention. Everything is acted out on a raised white oblong not much bigger than the York Hall canvas on which Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua began their careers. Call it the Ring in the ring if you choose.
