Future of Metropolitan Opera’s New Ring Cycle Uncertain Due to ENO Budget Cuts

By David Salazar

Per reports, the Metropolitan Opera will no longer be able to present its upcoming Ring Cycle production in 2025.

Back in 2021, the company announced that it would showcase a new staging of Wagner’s famed tetralogy in co-production with the English National Opera. However, earlier today the ENO announced that while it had been given new funding by Arts Council England, that it would still be getting a reduction from previous seasons and that this would impede the company from completing its Ring Cycle, which is directed by Richard Jones.

“With the ENO not being in a position to continue with the production of its Ring Cycle, it obviously makes it impossible to help produce it with them,” Met Opera general manager Peter Gelb told the Associated Press.

Per the Associated Press report, the Met was set to open the first production of the “Ring” in 2025 followed by a full cycle in 2026-27.

Jones’ production was set to succeed a staging of “Der Ring des Nibelungen” by Robert Lepage, which debuted in 2010 and was presented in full in 2012, 2013, and 2019. The production‘s central feature was a huge 45-ton machine that was prone to glitches and ill-timed malfunctions. It cost the company $16 million.

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