03 Apr 2005

Battle of the Rings

The escalating artistic arms race between London’s two rival opera houses, Covent Garden and the Coliseum, reached a new level of threat this weekend.


Phyllida Lloyd

Opera at war over Wagner

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Vanessa Thorpe [The Guardian, 3 Apr 05]

The escalating artistic arms race between London's two rival opera houses, Covent Garden and the Coliseum, reached a new level of threat this weekend.

Both venues are in the middle of staging block-busting versions of Richard Wagner's epic and expensive Ring cycle, but audiences at the Coliseum last night were left reeling from more than the music after the English National Opera mounted a violent coup de thétre.

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