Behind the Mills Ring cycle break-up Conductor Richard Mills Source: Supplied ON a sunny afternoon early last month, Opera Australia invited some journalists on to a sound stage in Melbourne's Docklands to see where rehearsals were taking place for its production of Der Ring des Nibelungen, due to open in November. The sound stage was cavernous and chilly inside. The rehearsal pianist had a heater near the piano stool, and people had snacks of nuts and muesli bars on their desks. Dominating the space were two semicircular sections of what would form a massive spiral ramp: part of the entrance to Valhalla, home of the gods. Things seemed to be going well. The afternoon before, the cast had sung Die Walkure -- the second part of the four-opera cycle -- from beginning to end and the director, Neil Armfield, and conductor, Richard Mills, were happy with the way it went. Both were staging The Ring for the first time, and the successful run-though of Walkure was reassurance that they were on the right track. They spoke of their initial fears about so daunting a challenge. Mills said: "But then you've got to get over it, and good things happen." In a separate conversation, soprano Susan Bullock and her husband, tenor Richard Berkeley-Steele said it was unusual, but not unknown, for a company to mount a Ring cycle in a single year, rather than by instalments. The English couple are experienced Wagnerians, part of the international contingent joining Australian singers in the Melbourne Ring. "It's very much a work in progress and we are all finding our way with each other and getting to know each other and seeing what we all feel," Bullock said that afternoon. Those of us who have done it before have got ideas of how we know it feels comfortable for us, but that has to fit with the staging, the conductor, the orchestra. A few weeks later, the cast ran through Rheingold and Die Walkure for OA's artistic director, Lyndon Terracini. The day after rehearsals finished, Terracini says, Mills told him that he couldn't continue. OA issued a statement the following week, with Mills saying there was an absence of "unity of vision," a lack of chemistry of a "certain vibrancy and character" between him and the cast. An insider says the atmosphere between Mills and the cast was tense. Mills was working with some seasoned Wagner singers, who brought their experience and way of singing the roles with them to the rehearsals. Mills was scrupulously prepared in the musical details, but did not have that same insight about The Ring in performance. There were few open disagreements, the source says, but on one occasion tensions flared between Mills and Bullock in a "spectacular blow-up." "The lack of chemistry was generated by the combination of Richard's lack of experience, especially in the face of a great deal of accumulated experience as represented by some of the cast," says the source, who asked to remain anonymous. Australia does not have a strong performance tradition of The Ring or of any of Wagner's operas. The first hearing of Wagner on this continent was a Lohengrin in Melbourne in 1877, sung in Italian with imported singers. Wagner historian Peter Bassett writes that the conductor, Alberto Zelman -- father of the founder of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra -- did not have a copy of the full score, had never seen a Wagner production, and orchestrated the music himself from a piano reduction. The first full production of The Ring in Australia was in 1913, a touring production from Britain by Thomas Quinlan's Opera Company. There were various Wagnerian ventures through the 20th century, but The Ring was not seen fully staged until 1998 in Adelaide with a production from the Theatre du Chatelet in Paris. The first fully home-grown Ring was Elke Neidhardt's spectacular and clearly told version, staged in Adelaide in 2004. For those who saw it, it is retained only in the memory: it was never filmed or telecast, although it was recorded and issued on CD by Melba Recordings. Parts of the production have since been sold off: the famous "Wunderbar" set -- used for the Ride of the Valkyries scene -- has had a second life as a music venue at the Brisbane Festival. The point is that there have been very few opportunities for local musicians and opera-makers to present Wagner's music-dramas in this country. And there is no shame in being a Wagner virgin. Pierre Boulez did not conduct The Ring until the 1976 centenary production at Bayreuth, although he had done Parsifal there. English conductor Sir Andrew Davis, the MSO's new chief conductor, did his first Ring, at Lyric Opera of Chicago, at the age of 61. Being a mature musician, he says, was an advantage. "You have to have a very clear sound-world in your head, and then you have to realise it," he says. Mills and Armfield are both first-timers. Armfield, a distinguished opera and theatre director, has not seen The Ring in full. And the Melbourne Ring is a new venture for the national opera company which, after abandoning a planned cycle in the early 1980s, has never presented Wagner's tetralogy in its entirety. Mills is best known as a composer, and among his terrific works for the stage is his 2001 opera Batavia, a musically vivid drama about the Dutch shipwreck and the reign of terror that followed. He has been artistic director of West Australian Opera and now heads Victorian Opera, a company that presents stimulating repertoire that the national company won't do. Its recent production of Nixon in China, directed by Roger Hodgman and conducted by Fabian Russell, was superb. As a conductor, Mills led an exciting production of Elektra in Perth last year and his musical direction earned him a Helpmann Award nomination. In 2005 he conducted a musically lucid and beautiful account of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde as part of Terracini's program for the Queensland Biennial Festival of Music. That concert performance, with the Australian Youth Orchestra and Lisa Gasteen and John Treleaven in the title roles, won two Helpmanns. Mills was to have conducted Tristan in Perth in 2006 -- in Armfield's production with Bullock as Isolde -- but had to withdraw because of ill health. The Melbourne Ring is a multi-million-dollar venture that has already hit some unforeseen snags. Two of the advertised cast, Juha Uusitalo as Wotan and Gary Lehman as Siegfried, have pulled out because of illness. The roles have been filled by Terje Stensvold and the exciting tenor Stefan Vinke. The fully subscribed production also has a $1 million hole in its budget, after the withdrawal of Houston Grand Opera as a co-producer. If Mills and the cast were unable to work together, Mills did the honourable thing by stepping down. Terracini has praised him for bringing the musical preparation this far, and now faces the task of engaging a conductor before rehearsals resume in September. By that stage, the cast will have less than three months before the first performance of Rheingold on November 18. The appointment of an experienced Wagner conductor is essential.