It's been estimated that a seat in the stalls for the whole fifteen-and-a-half hours of Wagner's four-part Ring Cycle at London's Royal Opera House will cost more than GBP600 ($8,800).
But already the houses are full and crowds are flocking to Covent Garden for their operatic fix of Teutonic mythology. This surge of enthusiasm has, perhaps, been stoked by the absence this year of a new cinematic episode of that other ring cycle.
It seems Londoners can't get enough of these epic Wagnerian quest operas. Over the past 10 months alone the capital has been home to three Rings: Simon Rattle's period-instrument performance at the Proms; the controversial English National Opera's cycle; and now the Royal Opera House version.
In their quest for the quasi-religious experience that Wagner's operas can induce, audiences are quite prepared to forget the composer's well-documented anti-Semitism, and the fact that Hitler idolised his works. The excuse is that music is something apart from and above politics and that the Ring Cycle is a genius work of epic proportion. Wagner famously wrote 'the incomparable thing about myth is that it is true for all time'.
And 150 years on, his cycle has certainly stood the test of time.
Wagner wrote his own libretto and, as his literary gifts weren't nearly as profound as his musical genius, the result is an overlong and obscure plot. It's easy to get lost in the narrative meanderings of the Ring Cycle, although the broad overall theme is the battle between love and power.
