“In Seattle, Glynn Ross audaciously resolved to mount Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung every summer in both German and English, starting in 1975. Speight Jenkins, who took over the Seattle Opera in 1983, is an equally zealous Wagnerite (the office closes for Wagner’s birthday) who insisted on world- class music and production values. This meant relinquishing Ross’s annual Ring in favor of more-varied summer repertoire keying on fresh productions of Lohengrin, the Ring, Tristan, Die Meistersinger, and Parsifal. Seattle’s 1986 Ring, directed by Francois Rochaix and designed by Robert Israel, remains the only North American version with the intellectual panache of Patrice Chereau’s landmark Bayreuth Ring of 1976. Seattle’s 2001 Ring, directed by Stephen Wadsworth, was hyperrealistic yet psychologically astute. Both productions were cast not according to glamorous past exposure but actual competence shrewdly assessed; both were complemented by first-rate Wagner lectures and (an amenity unknown at Lincoln Center or Carnegie Hall) a serious bookstore. The one Ring secured and the other consolidated Seattle’s status as the leading North American Wagner house.”

-- Joseph Horowitz, Classical Music in America