Annilese Miskimmon

Annilese Miskimmon, the artistic director of English National Opera, has asked critics not to reveal the ending of her new production of Tosca. Happy to oblige, though by the time Tosca makes her final exit, it’s been flagged so heavily that you’re not so much surprised as impatient to get it over with. Still, a spoiler’s a spoiler and opera, after all, is showbiz. The late Graham Vick, a genius at building new audiences, didn’t even provide a synopsis at his groundbreaking Birmingham Opera productions. Having read (and written) my share of opera synopses, there’s something to be said for that. But very few opera directors are as radical as Vick.

It’s sometimes said that if Wagner were alive today he’d be making movies, but come on – really? A generation of Wagnerites has grown up for whom the first and definitive encounter with Der Ring des Nibelungen was on the small screen – in my case, the BBC’s early-eighties serialisation of the Bayreuth centenary production. What lingered was not the spectacle, but the intimacy: Donald McIntyre and Gwyneth Jones enveloped in darkness, reaching into each other’s souls. If you grew up with Wagner on TV and came of age, culturally speaking, around the time The Sopranos first aired, it seems obvious that the Ring isn’t some effects-laden Marvel blockbuster before its time, but the world’s first long-form TV drama.