‘We want people on the edge of their seats’: Royal Opera boss Oliver Mears on the new season – and the controversies of the last

Wagnerites rejoice! Parsifal and the climax of Barrie Kosky’s acclaimed Ring cycle are in the pipeline. The director of opera talks about scoring a bullseye, the storms that rocked last season – and how to avoid sending audiences to sleep The morning I meet Oliver Mears, the director of opera at Covent Garden, I’m still walking on air. The day before I’d seen Wagner’s epic Siegfried, the third part of the Ring cycle. Nearly six hours long, it is an immersion into a world of gods and giants, h...

By Charlotte Higgins