Next year, Australia will stage its first ever performance of the complete operatic cycle of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen in the southern city of Adelaide. The Ring Cycle is not just a lot of music to perform in a short time period, it is arguably the most massive physical production any opera company could ever attempt to stage. “The size of the backdrops… is so vast and their technical demands so complex that they are being worked on in Adelaide, Perth, Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Technical expertise has been brought in from… the University of Adelaide and United Utilities Australia, a major water company. They are being designed by the team that constructed the cauldron that launched the 2000 Sydney Olympics.”