This is my third retype, as I can't make up my mind...  the Britten output is so rich and varied, that I wouldn't like to have to make a choice between GRIMES, DREAM, GLORIANA, HERRING, or BUDD.  BUDD, of course, has the cream of the male roles (since that was a criterion long ago in the opening messages!) but I can't help thinking that DREAM might be the most accessible to a neophyte opera fan...  simply because they will most probably already know the play?   I'm also influenced by the matter mentioned by Ollie above - in the case of GRIMES it's hard to find a DVD with a "perfect" production and cast, whereas for DREAM the Glyndebourne/Peter Hall production and cast is almost unsurpassable*, and deserves a place in any newly-developing collection of opera dvds

* I ought to mention a noble runner-up which isn't available on dvd at all - Abbey Opera's stunning MSND production for the Camden Festival in around 1985/6 (?) conducted by Tony Shelley, which was truly magical in every way.. the tenor was Ken Browne, whose final agonising over a profession was medicine's gain and music's loss.

Actually, Rheingold is by no means a bad idea.  I have certainly known people who have been won over to Wagner by hearing the Prelude - music that no matter how often one hears it never fails to astonish, by its sheer daring as much as anything.  And the rest of the work has some great set-pieces.

This view isn't new to me but I do find it rather baffling.  I've introduced a few people to Wagner via Tannhäuser and they have, without exception, been surprised by its accessibility.  The exchange between Tannhäuser & Venus in Act I, with its reprise of the liveliest theme in the overture tends to grab the listener even in a recording.  I remember playing the whole opera on a car stereo during a long journey and by the second 'verse' of Tannhäuser's plea to the goddess a chap who'd never heard the tune before was humming along.  In my experience, newcomers have far more trouble paying attention to, for example, what can seem like an interminable exchange between Isolde & Brangäne in the first half hour of 'Tristan'.


It's a risk worth taking, pw.  The danger, of course, is that you won't be forgiven by someone who blames you for making them sit through two acts of 'Die Walküre' waiting for the music from 'Apocalypse Now'.   I still think the 'Meeting Venus' soundtrack CD is a pretty good selection (with a bit of Robert Schumann thrown in for good measure!).

He certainly is in the current ENO version!  John Tomlinson performs everybody else off the stage, which actually overbalances the piece to its detriment.  You almost forget about the Marschallin/Octavian situation...

(Review for OT currently in progress )

   
   Och, Ollie, what's all this about Ochs?   

   More rummaging in the video off-air vaults, Ruth.      How does the David Alden production
   of "Tannhauser" (1999) recorded in the Bavarian State Opera House appeal? ; Zubin Mehta conducts
   the Bayerische Staatsoper;       Rene Kollo (Tannhauser), Waltraud Meier (Venus) and
   Nadine Secunde (Elisabeth)).

   Harry Kupfer's  production of "The Flying Dutchman" (1985), Bayreuth Festspiele, conductor
   Woldemar Nelsson.   Matti Salminen (Daland), Lisbeth Balslev (Senta), Robert Schunk (Erik) and
   Simon Estes (Der Hollander).

   Straight to DVD; for my own personal use, of course.

You'll have guessed I am not the best person to enthuse over Wagner, but Rheingold was certainly the work that grabbed my lukewarm interest.

I was going to the Ring at ROH in the lower slips, and in those days before surtitles you had to do your homework.  So I got the LPs out of Westminster City Library and got going.  Rheingold comes first and it was the one that I saw first.

Rheingold comes first, but with no soppy love interest, simply grasped mythic figures, each with its own leitmotif and a glorious start and close, it would be my recommendation.

When you think about it, The Ring has remarkably few 'highlights' that are separable from the rest of it (Ride of the V's, Forest Murmers etc.), at least in the way one could separate out an aria from a numbers opera. I think one reason for this is that those many 'bits' of the Ring that are genuinely highlights (the most beautiful/ exciting/ terrifying moments) are so powerfully integrated into the musical and dramatic fabric that they don't really seem to begin or end; in fact their 'coming about' and their dissolution are usually as remarkable as they are themselves. So one thing a highlights disc of The Ring inevitably does is deprive those bits of their contextual clout, although you could of course say the same about any such disc - it's just that with The Ring it seems even more bleeding-chunkish.

Bit late, but it says here http://www.eno.org/whats-on/whats-on.php?id=3336&season=forthcoming
"ENO Music Director Edward Gardner conducts this major new production of Musorgsky’s seven-scene version of Boris Godunov". Don't know if that answers the question?