Fifteen hours of Wagner: Opera Australia’s Ring Cycle brings big spectacle – and a world first – to Brisbane

Director Chen Shi-Zheng has a background in cinema, and his digital staging of the Ring Cycle in Queensland through December is ‘more than a gimmick’. Photograph: Opera Australia

A full staging of Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen – colloquially, the Ring Cycle – is a big deal anywhere: a 15-hour running time, split into four separate shows.

But for Brisbane to secure an international drawcard like this is particularly momentous, and here the city is getting something of a coup: a three-week series featuring cutting-edge production design, being billed by Opera Australia as the world’s first Ring Cycle with fully-digital backgrounds and scenery.