For those who can't take it all, single tickets for Nibelungs cycle

Tickets for single performances of Wagner's Ring operas, scheduled for Taipei in September, go on sale on Tuesday. So far you've only been able to buy a seat for the entire cycle and a related concert, five nights in all. Now you'll able to test the waters by buying one for the first opera, say, and seeing how you find it. Though the cheaper seats have mostly been sold, many others are still available, prompting the thought that Taiwan's operagoers are thinking it might all be just a bit too much.

If so, they should think again. Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelungs) has been seen as the summit of Western opera ever since its first complete staging in 1876. In addition, two super-stars in the international operatic firmament will be taking the leading male and female roles in Taipei. No one will say how much they're costing.

The Ring tells a complex but wildly passionate story involving gods, giants, Nibelungs and Valkyries. The demands on the singers are titanic, and it's from these operas that the popular image of the fierce and overweight operatic soprano, wearing a helmet and wielding a spear, derives.

Is it anything like Tolkien's Lord of the Rings cycle? When Tolkien was asked this, he replied the two rings were both round, and that was where the similarity ended. He knew perfectly well, though, that both works derived from the same Scandinavian and German legends. He may also have understood that his books were quintessentially English — sexless, amusing in places, and full of longings for a quainter and more innocent world. Wagner's cycle, by contrast, is self-indulgent, dominated by its women, and without a trace of whimsicality anywhere in its silence-free 15 hours.

Central to the Taipei Ring is the participation of superstars Linda Watson (as Brunnhilde) and James Morris (as Wotan). Watson will arrive in Taiwan fresh from her debut in the same role at the theater Wagner built in Bayreuth, Germany, while Morris has sung Wotan at New York's Metropolitan Opera on numerous occasions.

“We started rehearsing back in February,” said maestro Chien Wen-pin (簡文彬). “This was mainly to familiarize the musicians with the work as a whole.” There have also been separate rehearsals for the string and the wind sections while he was away working in Dusseldorf, he said.

Many well-known Taiwan singers will participate. Yu-Hsi Wu-Bei (巫白玉璽) (the Count in the recent Figaro) will sing the god Donner and the chief Gunther, Liau Chong-boon (廖聰文) (Bartolo in Figaro) will be the chief Hunding and the giant Fafner, Chen Pei-chi (Marcellina in Figaro) will sing the earth-goddess Erda and Brunnhilde's fellow-Valkyrie Waltraute, and Chen Yen-ling (陳妍陵) (Susanna in Figaro) the Rhinemaiden Woglinde and the Valkyrie Helmwige.

Wagner's Ring operas have been recorded many times. Which CD sets have influenced Chien most? “Especially memorable for me are the recordings of Furtwangler in Rome in 1953 and Karajan in Salzburg in the late 1960s,” he said. “There are also many excellent live recordings from Bayreuth in the 1950s and 1960s, for example under Knappertsbusch. One of my favorites is Kempe's, from Bayreuth in 1960.”

For many Wagner fans the early start, sometimes in mid-afternoon, adds a religious sense to the occasion, as if they're adherents of a mystery cult who must slip away during office hours to attend a secret ritual. And sure enough Gotterdammerung (The Twilight of the Gods) on Sept. 24 begins at 3pm. Dinner intervals are scheduled where necessary.