[Financial Times, 1 December 2006]

Just when questions are being raised, in the wake of the Litvinenko affair, about Russia’s trustworthiness as a superpower, along comes a 15-hour operatic allegory about the abuse of power – interpreted by a Russian company. Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, which is being performed this weekend in Cardiff, Wales, by St Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theatre, has nothing to say about Russian spies or nuclear contamination.