No one has written an opera longer, more challenging and trickier to cast than Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, but while companies around the world still regularly struggle to find singers equal to its superhuman demands, no management has faced a more daunting task than Wagner himself in assembling the forces for the premiere in 1876.

Josephine Scheffzky

Of course, the ‘master’ knew who he wanted, but a combination of hostile companies refusing to release their singers and avaricious or haughty stars reluctant to appear for what Wagner was offering – essentially nothing – meant that the line-up lurched from crisis to crisis. First the Siegfried and then the Hagen flip-flopped on him, and just when Wagner thought he’d got there, Loge went and got Sieglinde pregnant. It’s not quite as bad as it sounds, since Heinrich and Therese Vogl were in fact married (Vogl joked that Loge should have followed Alberich’s example and foresworn love), but for Wagner the hunt for a replacement was on with just four months to go to opening night.

At first Irma von Voggenhuber thought she could manage it, only to turn out a few days...