Ring engagement

The Mash meets The Ring! Robert Thicknesse gathers opera fans — broadcasting doyenne Penny Smith, music scholar and cultural policy consultant Lola Salem, and historian and Engelsberg Ideas editor Paul Lay — to discuss Siegfried, part three of Wagner’s Ring cycle, at Covent Garden. The world’s greatest one-man cultural artefact is a revolutionary critique of civilisation and an ecstatic vision of redemption… So how’s that going in WC2, and will anyone notice anything except the naked old lady? (Yes, we will.)