Opera Australia's Lyndon Terracini talks about HGO abandoning the Melbourne Ring

OA's Lydon Terracini: Still smiling?

Well, the good news is that HGO's dropping of the Melbourne Ring, and the accompanying loss of $1 Million funding, should not cause any major difficulties, as Opera Australia’s artistic director Lyndon Terracini told the Australian today;

"It’s disappointing, but in the scheme of things they were a minor partner. The level of financial commitment from Houston was $1 million" which he says OA can cover.

But why did HGO drop the project?

"Fundamentally, they were keen to do something different, rather than something that we’d done here.”

However, this seems odd considering HGO are re-staging the Valencia ring - hardly new either in an opera house or even on TV

Another possible explanation given by Limelight revolves around a shift in the relationship between OA and HGO since HGO's Anthony Freud left and was replaced by new CEO Patrick Summers. Artistic differences between both companies have also been rumored. Perhaps HGO did not want an Australian Ring? Who knows but for now, despite losing one of their partners, a Siegfried (Gary Lehman has again pulled from the role of Siegfried to be replaced with Stefan Vinke) and their Wotan ( Juha Uusitalo is to be replaced by Terje Stensvold) the Melbourne Ring rolls on - and as fans of many of OA's productions this pleases us greatly.